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windows server 2012 R2
- 2. @RicksterCDN
- 3. @holSystems
- 5. Day 1 Day 2 Introducing Windows Server 2012 R2 Server Management & Automation with Windows Server 2012 R2 Server Virtualization in Windows Server 2012 R2 VDI with Windows Server 2012 R2 Cloud Optimized Networking in Windows Server 2012 R2 Access & Information Protection with Windows Server 2012 R2 Storage in Windows Server 2012 R2 Web Application & Platform with Windows Server 2012 R2
- 6. Day 1 Day 2 Introducing Windows Server 2012 R2 Server Management & Automation with Windows Server 2012 R2 Server Virtualization in Windows Server 2012 R2 VDI with Windows Server 2012 R2 Cloud Optimized Networking in Windows Server 2012 R2 Access & Information Protection with Windows Server 2012 R2 Storage in Windows Server 2012 R2 Web Application & Platform with Windows Server 2012 R2
- 7. #WS2012R2JS DOWNLOAD Windows Server 2012 R2 Preview Hands-On Labs DOWNLOAD System Center 2012 R2 Preview aka.ms/ws2012r2 aka.ms/sc2012r2 http://www.microsoftvirtualacademy.com System Center 2012 R2 Jumpstart July 15th - http://aka.ms/SCR2JS
- 8. Agenda
- 10. Modern platform for the world’s apps
- 13. Opportunities: Datacenter solution with lower infrastructure costs and OPEX savings from increased operational efficiencies. Challenges: Datacenter solution with support for modern, self-service applications and automation of repeatable tasks. Datacenter solution with high level of crossplatform interoperability. Datacenter solution that unifies device environment and protects corporate data. End user the due to diverse Flat or shrinking IT on” mandate as Complexities lights budgets access to corporate “Keeping pressure to enableevenreduces agility information from a variety business expectations increase. datacenter infrastructure. of devices. to address app owners’ needs. Need to datacenter operations Efficient offer differentiated services to customers. across entire customer base.
- 16. High-performance live migration Live migration with RDMA
- 19. Dynamic Memory Maximum memory Hyper-V Maximum memory Maximum memory Paging file provides Memory reclaimed additional memory after startup for startup Removing paged memory with Virtual machine starting after virtual machine restart Hyper-V smart paging
- 20. Networking
- 22. NIC teaming Virtual adapters Teamed network adapter Physical adapters Teamed network adapter
- 23. Virtual IP address management • Provides network fault tolerance and continuous availability when network adapters fail by teaming multiple network interfaces. IPAM distributed architecture Domain • New in R2: Enhanced LBFO performance. europe.corp.woodbridge.com • Vendor agnostic and shipped inbox. • Provides local or remote management through Windows PowerShell or UI. • Enables teams of up to 32 network adapters. • Aggregates bandwidth from multiple network adapters. IPAM Server (UK) IPAM server (Redmond) DHCP, DNS, DC, and NPS servers Site: UK Branch office Domain DHCP, DNS, DC, and NPS servers fareast.corp.woodbridge.com • Includes multiple nodes: switch dependent and independent. IPAM Server (Hyderabad) Site: Redmond Head office DHCP, DNS, DC, and NPS servers Site: Hyderabad Branch office IPAM Server (Bangalore) DHCP, DNS, DC, and NPS servers Site: Bangalore Branch office 2
- 24. Storage
- 25. Storage tiering • Inbox storage virtualization solution with automatic tiering Solid State Drives • Improved storage costperformance with industry-standard hardware • Use solid-state drives (SSD) and hard-disk drives (HDD) in tiered storage space • Can “pin” high priority files to the SSD tier Hot data Cold data Hard Disk Drives
- 26. Health Monitoring Datacenter A System Center Virtual Machine Manager Configure Sign up Create recovery plan AD SQL Exch Hyper-V Replica replicates changes Create a recovery plan Orchestrates recovery plan for VMs or services in the event of an outage System Center Virtual Machine Manager Datacenter B AD SQL Exch
- 27. Windows Azure Backup Only a few servers that need protection. Currently no back up solution or replacing a competing product. Use the Windows Server backup tools. Currently using System Center Data Protection Manager.
- 28. Server management and automation
- 29. Windows Management Framework Maximize the value of using the Windows Management Framework
- 30. Windows Server Essentials Experience Essentials functionalities are enabled via a dedicated server role in Windows Server Standard and Windows Server Datacenter. Familiar and seamless deployment experience that sets up the most fundamental roles for the primary server. Optional unattended deployment and configuration using PowerShell.
- 31. Windows PowerShell 4.0 Key features Broader coverage Higher performance Greater resiliency More intuitive • Rich management through more than 3,000 cmdlets • Windows PowerShell Web Access • • • • • Robust session connectivity Disconnected sessions Session configuration files Job scheduling Windows PowerShell Workflow • On-the-fly compilation—scripts run up to six times faster • Performance improvements • Integrated scripting environment 3.0: IntelliSense | Code Snippets • Syntax simplification • Cmdlet discovery and module auto-loading • Updatable help • Script-sharing
- 32. DEVELOPER
- 33. Programming symmetry Windows Azure applications On-premises applications
- 34. NUMA-aware scalability Previous Internet Information Services versions on NUMA hardware Internet Information Services in Windows Server 2012 R2 on NUMA hardware Starts scaling NEGATIVELY when the number of cores increases beyond the point where memory synchronization outweighs the benefits of any additional cores Scales POSITIVELY with increasing cores, allowing organizations to benefit from their NUMA hardware investments Non-Uniform Memory Architecture • Processors can access local memory faster than remote memory • A significant percentage of new servers have NUMA • Designed for scale-up
- 35. Support for open source software Windows Web App Gallery Atom feed is consumed by the App Gallery itself, Web Platform Installer, Internet Information Services Manager, and participating hosting control panels. Windows Web App Gallery Atom feed Internet Information Services Hosting control panel Web Platform Installer tool Developers follow three steps to submit an application to Windows Web App Gallery. Web platform installer • Automates installation of the most popular ASP.NET and PHP apps through Windows Web App Gallery. • Simplifies discovery and acquisition of the Microsoft web stack. • Supported on Windows Server 2012 R2.
- 36. Access and information protection
- 37. Controlled access to corporate data Users are provided with a common identity when accessing cloud-based resources. Users can access corporate applications and data wherever they are. IT can use Windows Server Remote Access to provide seamless application access and automatic VPN connections with conditional access based on user and device validation. When a user registers their device it becomes known and “trusted” to provide device level authentication. IT can then publish access to resources based on registration plus the users identity.
- 39. Personalization with user profile disk Benefits What should I deploy? disk. User profile Available with pooled virtual machine collections and remote desktop session host collections Stores all user settings and data Contains roaming user profile, Folder Redirection cache, and user environment virtualization With every virtual machine pool and remote desktop session host collection. User profile disk with pooled virtual machine collections. Folder redirection. To apply roaming user data across collections. Roams with user within collection Appears as a local disk and improves application compatibility User environment virtualization. To apply roam settings across collections. To centralize user data backup. User profile disk with remote desktop session host collections.
- 40. Storage de-duplication for VDI Hyper-V VDI SMB Scale-out file server Dedup Cluster shared volumes
- 41. RemoteFX over WAN Hardware and software GPUs Rich multimedia USB redirection Corporate LAN Hardware & software GPUs, Rich multimedia, USB redirection. Internet or WAN Multitouch, WAN acceleration Single sign-on. Multitouch WAN acceleration Single sign-on
- 42. Enterprise-class Simple and cost-effective Application focused User centric Best-in-class performance and scale for Microsoft workloads SMB traffic offload to RDMA-capable NICs for dramatic performance improvements Complete VM portability between Windows Server and Windows Azure without the need for VM conversion Always-on remote access to corporate information from trusted devices Flexible guest clustering options for file and block storage with shared VHDX files that preserve dynamic memory, live migration and storage live migration for guest VM Same development model between Windows Server and Windows Azure Industry-leading support for 64-node clusters and 8,000 VMs per cluster 64 TB VHDX virtual disk with online resize for dynamically growing and shrinking the VHDX file Hyper-V Network Virtualization and multitenant VPN gateway for inbox software-defined networking (SDN) solution Windows Azure Backup for reliable and cost-effective backup to the cloud VDI storage de-duplication Common development tools between Windows Server and Windows Azure for a rich and complete environment to build applications on-premises and for the cloud Consistent, inbox Windows experience for remote users virtually anywhere on any device Unified application and device management with common identity onpremises and in the cloud Granular, policy-based data protection and regulatory compliance
- 43. #WS2012R2JS DOWNLOAD Windows Server 2012 R2 Preview Hands-On Labs DOWNLOAD System Center 2012 R2 Preview aka.ms/ws2012r2 aka.ms/sc2012r2 http://www.microsoftvirtualacademy.com System Center 2012 R2 Jumpstart July 15th - http://aka.ms/SCR2JS
Notes de l'éditeur
- Generic question and interactive reminder slideWhat Twitter hashtag will we be using for this jumpstart to talk outside of the chat, besides our names?
- Let's start by talking about key trends we are seeing. We’re in the midst of a transformation – and this has a big impact on our strategy as well as our customers’ IT investments. I know I don’t need to pitch this to you and you are all very well versed in what is going on in the industry. But Microsoft have been using this frame for quite some time. Not only with our customers but also as north star for our product and marketing direction. Suffice to say we clearly understand that the world is different now and Microsoft is committed to helping our customers not only survive this transformation but really take the opportunity to thrive.We all know we’re seeing a new breed of applications being built:New apps need must reach cloud-scale.They need to be accessible 24/7 from anywhere.And they need to be deployable on-premises, in the cloud and in hybrid environments.Plus end users of these applications are accessing them with an increasing number and variety of devices, as part of a trend known as the consumerization of IT. They expect to be productive from those devices wherever they are, whenever they want. This in turn has triggered a data explosion with data volume expected to grow by double-digit percentages. And finally, of course, the entire way computing is done is changing: Cloud computing models have replaced the traditional approachof tying specific applications to specific servers with the concept of pooled resources that enable IT to deploy applications as elastic self-service services.Along with these changes in customer demand, have come innovations in computing technology that help enable and support these scenarios. Compute has continued to become more and more powerful with multi-core chips and increasing memory density amidst costs going down. With storage you see tiering technologies and SSD costs coming down, providing a huge opportunity for the datacenter to leverage industry-standard hardware while providing enterprise-grade capability. And finally with networking, fast interconnects between storage and compute nodes have emerged which are also driving a lot of innovation.But, the key to this co-evolution of storage, compute and network is really the software that unlocks the value of this innovation for our customers. And that is the foundation for our vision.
- With this transformation underway, the traditional approaches to IT are no longer adequate. Customers need a different approach in this new era of IT. Microsoft’s Cloud OS vision is to provide customers with one consistent platform for infrastructure, apps and data - spanning customer datacenters, hosting service provider datacenters, and the Microsoft public cloud. They need a unified strategy and a consistent platform that:Transforms the Datacenter: …in many ways moving the unit of compute from the single server to the datacenter level. Customers need an infrastructure which provides a generational leap in agility, elasticity, and scalablity across a set of shared resources with more automation and self-service.Customers are also focused on Enabling Modern Apps: Today’s apps need to interact with other apps built on multiple platforms and languages; and they need to live on-premises or off-premises and be delivered out to multiple devices. With the explosion of data, customers need a platform that Unlocks Insights on Any Data. To better compete, customers need to tap into growing data volumes, especially with unstructured data, or “Big Data”, to ask new questions and discover new data sources which they can combine with existing data for new insights. And finally with the proliferation and range of new devices, companies need to Empower People-Centric IT. Today’s users expect to be productive wherever they choose, on whatever device they choose, and IT needs to easily manage these devices and securely deliver apps and data in an extended, mobile environment.And at Microsoft, we have been learning by delivering global scale services from our datacenters what is required from this new era of IT, and we have taken what we’ve learned, together with the trends and technology innovations, and built them into our core products to deliver the modern platform, which we call the Cloud OS. Our unique experience in running massive online services is at the heart of the Cloud OS and the heart of our products. We engineer these products from the “cloud up” which means every customer benefits from what we’ve learned.And this is not just about the software that we provide to our customers to run in their IT environments. This is fundamentally about consistency. Only Microsoft provides a consistent platform across customers’ datacenters, the Windows Azure datacenters run by Microsoft, and hosted IT environments run by service providers. This is really a unique and differentiated approach for our company.This consistency spans many facets including:How apps are developed in a flexible way, including Microsoft and open sourceProviding a unified and consistent management approach across these datacenters.And a complete data platform.Having a common identity and security approach.That enabled integrated virtualization
- These consistent capabilities make the Cloud OS unique. So does the fact that the Cloud OS is deeply informed by our first-hand experience running 200+ cloud services for 1+billion customers and 20+ million businesses around the world.Ultimately a firm can only truly deliver this type of innovation if it has the track record and direct experience in building and running large datacenters and online services. Of course at Microsoft, we have an unrivaled experience in doing just that, across services such as Office 365, Xbox Live, Bing and a host of other major online services including our cloud platform, Windows Azure. We have learned and proven how to drive down cost through a combination of software, hardware innovation and extreme automation. We also learned how to maintain efficient, high availability services on industry standard hardware.And this innovation and know-how from running these online services provides us a unique perspective on the challenges our customers face. This learning makes its way into the software we sell such as Windows Server and System Center, creating a virtuous cycle that enables us to provide market-leading capabilities for our customers. Our breadth of experience across private, public and hybrid cloud is unmatched, whereas other vendors tend to specialize in one or another area.We run over 200 online services to hundreds of millions of people globally 24/7 such as MSN, Bing, Outlook.com, and Office 365. We consume data from those datacenters to drive rich analytics to improve customer experience. And of course our work with Windows Azure creates a virtuous cycle that brings even more of this feedback into our Windows Server development process. Bing had already deployed Windows Server 2012 even before RTM. It has been powering all of the Bing searches since the RC release earlier this year, handling over 5.5 billion search queries each month. Windows Server 2012 is battle tested. And this is extended with Office 365 and its use of Active Directory and Xbox Live with its use of the virtual GPU in Windows Server. These services and more are consuming services from Windows Server and in turn providing a unique feedback loop that makes Windows Server more capable. Only Microsoft can say this. Optional factoids:Windows Azure is available in 89 countries around the world.5.5 billion+ Bing queries monthly350 million active Hotmail accounts40 million XBOX Live users 200+ global, 24x7, online services 135k Dynamics CRM users
- These are but illustrative examples (there’s a lot more) of how we’ve implemented our core learnings from operating large scale cloud services as capabilities/features within Windows Server so you can also benefit from the resulting agility and cost benefits. We’re committed to this approach as we continue the journey towards realizing our Cloud OS vision.1. High performance storage on industry-standard hardware File & storage services – Microsoft’s large scale cloud services implement hot-hot nodes in many cases so the application services can seamlessly failover in case of node failures. Analogously, Active-On technologies in Windows Server 2012 are those capabilities than can survive the failure of a key component without disrupting the service provided - for example, the File and Storage Services server role can be deployed in an active-active cluster which can endure the failure of a server while maintaining connectivity for clients. Even open file handles are maintained. Offloaded data transfer– This feature came about by applying a key design principle that Windows Azure uses to Windows Server 2012, which is to push work to hardware as much as possible so CPU cycles can be optimally leveraged for the hosted application. Storage spaces - We routinely provision commodity hardware in our pods thereby making hardware failure a non-event; we wanted to provide enterprise customers with the ability to easily and flexibly provision inexpensive storage. Windows Server 2012 enables you to use file servers for even critical workloads like Hyper-V server and SQL with arguably similar reliability and performance characteristics as more expensive storage (e.g. SAN). 2. Multi-tenant environments with isolationServer core - Small footprint with server core so you do not have to worry about updating or fixing unnecessary code, meaning less churning or required reboots for the host. This is similar to how we designed the Windows Azure hypervisor where we’ve only retained (and optimized) critical code paths that are applicable to large scale cloud scenarios. Hyper-V Network Virtualization - Windows Azure was designed from the ground up to be multi-tenant environment with isolation given that it hosts apps and infrastructure that belongs to different customers. Over time, it became increasingly evident that this same requirement would be pertinent to enterprises implementing cloud infrastructure (albeit at smaller scale) given the need to distinguish between infrastructure allocated to different departments, integrating infrastructure from acquisitions, assigning costs etc. We then built the ability to isolate networks logically in multi-tenant enterprise environments with Hyper-V using similar architectural considerations. Web-sites & virtual machines - These are great examples of how we’ve bought consistent experiences and cloud-optimized services from Windows Azure to Windows Server and System Center environments.3. Software-defined NetworkingHyper-V Network Virtualization - The network virtualization features within Windows Azure and Windows Server enable customers to easily extend their on-premises datacenters into third party datacenters (e.g. Windows Azure or service providers) by allowing for flexible placement of VMs along with the ability to continue using the same IP address. Cross-premises connectivity- The cross-site connectivity capabilities offered by Windows Server 2012 and Windows Azure (Windows Azure Virtual Network) complement each other well for VPN-like scenarios. Network QoS – Windows Server 2012 provides the ability to programmatically adhere to a given SLA by guaranteeing minimum bandwidth available to a VM or a port. We’re assessing how to implement this in Windows Azure (albeit at a much larger scale) to shift from “best effort” to quality of service guarantees, thus providing an example of this bi-directional virtuous learning between our platforms. 4. Policy based Automation Cluster aware updates (CAU) – Windows Server 2012 lowers downtime by coordinating software updates on all servers in a failover cluster while maintaining continuous availability as appropriate. For example, in case of applications with continuous availability features such as Hyper-V with live migration, or an SMB 3.0 file server with SMB Transparent Failover, CAU can coordinate automated cluster updating with no impact on service availability. This is very similar to Windows Azure which offers the ability to maintain high availability for its cloud services (e.g. web role/worker role) and virtual machines through Upgrade Domains (UD) and Availability sets. Dynamic optimization – System Center 2012 - Virtual Machine Manager provides the ability to load balances the resources within a host cluster automatically using a policy based approach (e.g. move workloads VMs between hosts based on defined CPU, memory, or I/O thresholds). Such policy based automation is implemented by the Windows Azure Fabric Controller too using various load balancing approaches. 5. Application elasticity Service templates– Similar to how an application owner (or developer) can specify application instance counts and scale thresholds in Windows Azure, service templates in System Center enable application owners to specify similar parameters that enable scaling the application once relevant thresholds are reached.
- One of the key things that all of us have got to do and some of our core responsibilities, most of you in this room are responsible for infrastructure in your organizations and you have a service level, you've got budgets, and the demands that are being asked of you are continually escalating, they're going up. Your budgets usually are staying about the same. But you're being asked to deliver this elastic, always-available, highly scalable fabric across all your customers' needs.If you are an ITPro in an enterprise, you are really trying to get ahead of some of the mundane tasks that are simply keeping the lights on in your datacenter, and instead focus on impactful projects that can help your organization achieve a substantial competitive advantage in the market, while being a great partner to your applications owners.If you are an ITPro in a service provider organization, you are likely mostly concerned about how to differentiate your offerings so you can better compete with the Googles and Amazons of the world. Being able to quickly offer new, value-add application services while keeping laser focus on your costs will make your business more successful.Whether you are a professional services provider company or providing professional IT services within your company, there are a few things that you will want to expect from a modern datacenter and cloud solution; you want to be able to:- Lower infrastructure cost and increase operational efficiencies-Automate repeatable tasks to focus on strategic projects- Benefit from a high level of cross-platform interoperability-Build and deploy modern, self-service and highly available applications that can span datacenters- Unify your device environment and protect your corporate information so you can empower your users
- When you optimize your business for the cloud with Windows Server 2012 R2, you take advantage of the skills and investment you’ve already made in building a familiar and consistent platform. Windows Server 2012 R2 builds on that familiarity. With Windows Server 2012 R2, you gain all the Microsoft experience behind building and operating private and public clouds, delivered as an enterprise-class, simple and cost-effective server and cloud platform.Windows Server 2012 R2 delivers significant value around the following seven key capabilities:Server virtualization. Windows Server 2012 R2 is a virtualization platform that has helped organizations of all sizes realize considerable cost savings and operational efficiencies. With industry leading size and scale, Hyper-V is the platform of choice for you to run your mission critical workloads.Hyper-V in Windows Server 2012 R2 greatly expands support for host processors and memory. Using Windows Server 2012 R2, you can take advantage of new hardware technology, while still utilizing the servers you already have. This way you can virtualize today, and be ready for the future.Storage. Windows Server 2012 R2 was designed with a strong focus on storage, from the foundation of the storage stack up, with improvements ranging from provisioning storage to how data is clustered, transferred across the network, and ultimately accessed and managed. Windows Server 2012 R2 offers a wide variety of high-performance, highly available storage features and capabilities, while taking advantage of industry-standard hardware for dramatically lower cost.Networking. Windows Server 2012 R2 makes it as straightforward to manage an entire network as a single server, giving you the reliability and scalability of multiple servers at a lower cost. Automatic rerouting around storage, server, and network failures enables file services to remain online with minimal noticeable downtime. What’s more, Windows Server 2012 R2 – together with System Center 2012 R2 – provides an end-to-end Software Defined Networking solution across public, private, and hybrid cloud implementations.Servermanagement and automation. Windows Server 2012 R2 enables IT professionals to meet the need for fast, continuous and reliable service within their datacenters by offering an integrated platform to automate and manage the increasing datacenter ecosystem. Windows Server 2012 R2 delivers capabilities to manage and automate many servers and the devices connecting them, whether they are physical or virtual, on-premises or off, and using standards-based technologies.Web and application platform.Windows Server 2012 R2 builds on the tradition of the Windows Server family as a proven application platform, with thousands of applications already built and deployed and a community of millions of knowledgeable and skilled developers already in place. Windows Server 2012 R2can offer your organization even greater application flexibility. You can build and deploy applications either on-premises or in the cloud—or both at once, with hybrid solutions that work in both environments.Access and information protection. With the new capabilities in Windows Server 2012 R2, you will be able to better manage and protect data access, simplify deployment and management of your identity infrastructure on-premises and across clouds, and provide your users with more secure remote access to applications data from virtually anywhere and any device.Virtual desktop infrastructure. With Windows Server 2012 R2, Microsoft is making it even easier to deploy and deliver virtual resources across workers’ devices. VDI technologies in Windows Server 2012 R2offer easy access to a rich, full-fidelity Windows environment running in the datacenter, from virtually any device. Through Hyper-V and Remote Desktop Services, Microsoft offers three flexible VDI deployment options in a single solution: Pooled Desktops, Personal Desktops, and Remote Desktop Sessions (formerly Terminal Services).
- With Windows Server 2012 R2, it is now easier than ever for organizations to take advantage of the cost savings of virtualization and make the optimum use of server hardware investments by consolidating multiple server roles as separate virtual machines. You can use Hyper-V to efficiently run multiple operating systems — Microsoft Windows, Linux, and others — in parallel, on a single server. Let’s see how the server virtualization capabilities in Windows Server 2012 R2 respond to key IT demands with more features, greater scalabilityand flexibility.IT demands: Support for demanding, critical business workloadsThis means IT wants bigger, better, faster and more available virtual machines; IT also wants to use their new servers as they come out and be able to fully leverage the raw power that the servers provide.WS12R2 delivers: Enterprise-class scale and performanceYou can achieve greater densities and run more demanding workloads through the scale and performance improvements of Windows Server 2012 R2. Within your organization, as you virtualize more of your infrastructure, you need to have a platform, a hypervisor, that can support your most demanding workloads. Then, as you adopt newer hardware, you will need to be able to utilize the advancements within the hardware to the fullest, without losing the capability of the existing investments in infrastructure you already have. Among other things, new features and updates in Windows Server 2012 R2 include:- Best-in-class performance for Microsoft workloads:Virtualized Microsoft workloads (Exchange, SQL, Sharepoint, etc.) run best on Hyper-V infrastructure. For example, ESG Lab testing showed that an Exchange 2013 infrastructure deployed within twelve Hyper-V virtual machines, running on a single physical server, supported the I/O requirements of up to 48,000 simulated users, while average database read response times ranged between 5.02 and 15.31 milliseconds, well below the Microsoft recommended limit of 20 milliseconds. In another test case, ESG Lab took an existing OLTP workload that was vCPU limited by the maximum allowed configuration of four vCPUs imposed by Windows Server 2008 and increased the performance by six times taking advantage of 64 vCPUs in Windows Server 2012. The average transaction response times also improved by five times from four vCPUs to 64 vCPUs.- Industry-leading 64 TB VHDX virtual disk with dynamic resize:With the evolution of storage systems, and the ever-increasing reliance on virtualized enterprise workloads, the VHD format of Windows Server needed to also evolve. The new VHDX format in Windows Server 2012 is better suited to address the current and future requirements for running enterprise-class workloads. It has much larger capacity and additional resiliency. VHDX supports up to 64 terabytes of storage. It also provides additional protection from corruption from power failures by logging updates to the VHDX metadata structures and prevents performance degradation on large-sector physical disks by optimizing structure alignment. Online VHDX resize is a new feature in Windows Server 2012 R2 which provides additional VM storage flexibility by allowing virtual SCSI disks to expand and shrink whilst attached to a virtual machine.- High-performance live migration with compression or RDMA offload:Live migration is an important VM mobility feature that has kept getting better and better with Hyper-V since it was introduced with Windows Server 2008 R2. Improving the performance of live migrating a VM from the source host to the target host has been a constant focus for Windows Server, and in Windows Server 2012 R2 these performance improvements have been taken to the next level: Live migration compression is a new feature that accelerates live migration transfer speed by compressing the VHD/VHDX file, improving performance roughly by 2x for most real-life workloads. Live migration with RDMA offload is another new R2 feature, which delivers the highest performance for live migrations on >10GBit network connections, supporting transfer speeds of up to 56 GB/s, by offloading the transfer to hardware and harnessing the power of remote direct memory access (RDMA) technologies.IT demands: Increased flexibility to move resources and workloadsThis means IT wants the flexibility to move virtual machines wherever it would be best to run them whether on premises or at a Service Provider. It also includes the ability to offer VM guests flexible clustering options.WS12R2 delivers: Virtual Machine MobilityWindows Server 2012 R2 allows you to manage virtual machines independently of their underlying physical infrastructure. It also enables you to handle changes in resource demand as they occur and gives you the ability to rebalance running virtual machines either through the servers which the VMs reside on, or the storage resources used by the virtual machines. Among other things, new features and updates in Windows Server 2012 R2 include:- Industry-first shared-nothing live migration:With “Shared Nothing” Live Migration where you can move a virtual machine, live, from one physical system to another even if they don’t have connectivity to the same shared storage. This is useful, for example, in a branch office where you may be storing the virtual machines on local disk, and you want to move a VM from one node to another. This is also especially useful when you have two independent clusters and you want to move a virtual machine, live, between them, without having to expose their shared storage to one another. You can also use “Shared Nothing” Live Migration to migrate a virtual machine from one datacenter to another provided your bandwidth is large enough to transfer all of the data between the datacenters.- Flexible guest clustering options including shared VHDX files:Windows Server 2012 R2 offers the most flexible guest clustering options that give you complete flexibility for deploying application-level high availability, without sacrificing agility and density. In addition to Fiber Channel, iSCSI and SMB, Windows Server 2012 R2 now also offers shared VHDX files. Unlike competing guest clustering that does not support file-based storage, shared VHDX files can be stored on a scale-out file server cluster or on Cluster-shared Volumes (CSV) on block storage. Unlike competing guest clustering options, shared VHDX clustering preserves dynamic memory, live migration and storage live migration for a VM that is part of the guest cluster.Multi-node Hyper-V Replica with configurable replication frequencyIntroduced in Windows Server 2012 R2, Hyper‑V Replica provides a storage-agnostic and workload-agnostic solution that replicates efficiently, periodically, and asynchronouslyover IP-based networks, typically to a remote site. It also allows an administrator to easily test the replica virtual machine without disrupting the ongoing replication. If a disaster occurs at the primary site, administrators can quickly restore their business operations by bringing up the replicated virtual machine at the Replica site. New in Windows Server 2012 R2, Hyper-V Replica now allows for variable (configurable) replication frequencies (30 sec., 5 min., 15 min.) and also supports multiple nodes; this means that tertiary replica sites are supported, for example in the case of a service provider who wants to replicate a customer’s workload to another (tertiary) data center.IT demands: Leverage existing cross-platform investmentsMany enterprises and service providers are running a mix of hypervisors, operating systems and applications. Often times, migrating from one platform to another, if even a goal, is either not easily feasible from a technical standpoint, or a much bigger project than IT organizations are willing to take on.WS12R2 delivers: First-class citizen guest support for LinuxWindows Server 2012 R2 has been designed to support a heterogeneous datacenter and cloud infrastructure by adding comprehensive functional support for Linux guests running on top of Hyper-V.Full Dynamic Memory support for Linux:Dynamic Memory was introduced with Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 and is used to automatically reallocate memory between virtual machines that are running on a Hyper-V host. A number of improvements were made for Windows guests in Windows Server 2012, and new in Windows Server 2012 R2, these improvements are now also available to Linux guests running on top of Hyper-V; they include:Minimum memory setting – being able to set a minimum value for the memory assigned to a virtual machine that is lower than the startup memory settingHyper-V smart paging – which is paging that is used to enable a virtual machine to reboot while the Hyper-V host is under extreme memory pressureMemory ballooning – the technique used to reclaim unused memory from a virtual machine to be given to another virtual machine that has memory needsRuntime configuration – the ability to adjust the minimum memory setting and the maximum memory configuration setting on the fly while the virtual machine is running without requiring a reboot.Linux Integration Services included in key standard distrosUp until now, if you wanted to take advantage of Linux Integration Services (LIS) for your Hyper-V environment, you had to go to the Microsoft download center, download the correct LIS package for your Linux distribution, and then manually install it on your Hyper-V servers. New for Windows Server 2012 R2 Hyper-V hosts, key Linux vendors (such as RHEL, SUSE, CentOS and Ubuntu) are going to include LIS for Hyper-V in their standard distros, so there is no manual step involved any longer in order for you to take advantage of the latest LIS capabilities.
- Lets consider a simplistic scenario:You have a client and server. You want to request data of say 500k from the client – this typically goes through the TCP/IP stack, you place a request for getting the data to the server, the data gets read, gets broken down into smaller packets, transferred back to you. You assimilate all these packets into the 500k data that you asked for and send it back up. All this takes CPU resources. You cant send the entire 500k at once no matter how fast your NIC is. You still have to chop it down into small packets and send it up and down the stack. Now think about having multiple NICs doing a lot of IO intensive operations. Your CPU is just busy doing this over and over again. You don’t want your CPU to be used for this – you want it to work on servicing database requests, indexing and so on. We worked with a lot of network adapter vendors to bring a class of specialized NICs to support high speed data transfers with SMB Direct into Windows Server 2012. These NICs have a better CPU in them and support Remote Direct Memory Access or RDMA so that they can transfer data between them without involving the host CPU. How does it work – I need to read 500k of data. First I find out a place in memory where that data should reside, then I register that with the NIC and get a token back. I send this token back to the other side through SMB direct and say I need to read 500k of data. Now the host uses this token, identifies the memory that needs to be copied, passes the memory location and the token to the NIC and says this is the data that needs to be transferred, why don’t you guys just talk with each other and transfer the data over. So the two NICs actually do the transfer. The two CPUs are now busy doing something else. RDMA can be incredibly fast – 1-2 ms latency when doing transfers. We support Infiniband, RoCE and iWARP network interfaces.New in Windows Server 2012 R2, we are taking advantage of RDMA technology and are introducing it to Hyper-V live migrations taking advantage of the SMB protocol. As in the case with regular SMB file transfers, RDMA enables the offloading of CPU resources to NICs during live migration. This means that live migrations can now take advantage of high-speed networking, and they can also stream over multiple networks for improved bandwidth. Live migration with RDMA delivers the highest performance for live migrations, supporting transfer speeds of up to 56 GB/s.
- NOTE: This slide is animated and has 4 clicksWith Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V, you can also perform a “Shared Nothing” Live Migration where you can move a virtual machine, live, from one physical system to another even if they don’t have connectivity to the same shared storage. This is useful, for example, in a branch office where you may be storing the virtual machines on local disk, and you want to move a VM from one node to another. This is also especially useful when you have two independent clusters and you want to move a virtual machine, live, between them, without having to expose their shared storage to one another. You can also use “Shared Nothing” Live Migration to migrate a virtual machine from one datacenter to another provided your bandwidth is large enough to transfer all of the data between the datacenters.As you can see in the animation, when you perform a live migration of a virtual machine between two computers that do not share an infrastructure, Hyper-V first performs a partial migration of the virtual machine’s storage by creating a virtual machine on the remote system and creating the virtual hard disk on the target storage device.[Click]While reads and writes occur on the source virtual hard disk, the disk contents are copied over the network to the new destination virtual hard disk.This copy is performed by transferring the contents of the VHD between the two servers over the IP connection between the Hyper-V hosts.[Click]After the initial disk copy is complete, disk writes are mirrored to both the source and destination virtual hard disks while outstanding disk changes are replicated.This copy is performed by transferring the contents of the VHD between the two servers over the IP connection between the Hyper-V hosts.[Click]After the source and destination virtual hard disks are synchronized, the virtual machine live migration process is initiated, following the same process that was used for live migration with shared storage.After the virtual machine’s storage is migrated, the virtual machine migrates while it continues to run and provide network services. [Click]After the live migration is complete and the virtual machine is successfully running on the destination server, the files on the source server are deleted.
- Note: This slide is animated and has 1 clickDynamic Memory was introduced with Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 and is used to reallocate memory between virtual machines that are running on a Hyper-V host. Improvements made within Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V includeMinimum memory setting – being able to set a minimum value for the memory assigned to a virtual machine that is lower than the startup memory settingHyper-V smart paging – which is paging that is used to enable a virtual machine to reboot while the Hyper-V host is under extreme memory pressureMemory ballooning – the technique used to reclaim unused memory from a virtual machine to be given to another virtual machine that has memory needsRuntime configuration – the ability to adjust the minimum memory setting and the maximum memory configuration setting on the fly while the virtual machine is running without requiring a reboot.Because a memory upgrade requires shutting down the virtual machine, a common challenge for administrators is upgrading the maximum amount of memory for a virtual machine as demand increases. For example, consider a virtual machine running SQL Server and configured with a maximum of 8 GB of RAM. Because of an increase in the size of the databases, the virtual machine now requires more memory. In Windows Server 2008 R2 with SP1, you must shut down the virtual machine to perform the upgrade, which requires planning for downtime and decreasing business productivity. With Windows Server 2012, you can apply that change while the virtual machine is running.[Click]As memory pressure on the virtual machine increases, an administrator can change the maximum memory value of the virtual machine, while it is running and without any downtime to the VM. Then, the Hot-Add memory process of the VM will ask for more memory and that memory is now available for the virtual machine to use.
- Note: This slide is animated and has 2 clicksHyper-V Smart Paging is a memory management technique that uses disk resources as additional, temporary memory when more memory is required to restart a virtual machine. This approach has both advantages and drawbacks. It provides a reliable way to keep the virtual machines running when no physical memory is available. However, it can degrade virtual machine performance because disk access speeds are much slower than memory access speeds.To minimize the performance impact of Smart Paging, Hyper-V uses itonly when all of the following occur:The virtual machine is being restarted.No physical memory is available.No memory can be reclaimed from other virtual machines that are running on the host.Hyper-V Smart Paging is not used when:A virtual machine is being started from an off state (instead of a restart).Oversubscribing memory for a running virtual machine would result.A virtual machine is failing over in Hyper-V clusters.Hyper-V continues to rely on internal guest paging when host memory is oversubscribed because it is more effective than Hyper-V Smart Paging. With internal guest paging, the paging operation inside virtual machines is performed by Windows Memory Manager. Windows Memory Manager has more information than does the Hyper-V host about memory use within the virtual machine, which means it can provide Hyper-V with better information to use when it chooses the memory to be paged. Because of this, internal guest paging incurs less overhead to the system than Hyper-V Smart Paging.In this example, we have multiple VMs running, and we are restarting the last virtual machine. Normally, that VM would be using some amount of memory between the Minimum and Maximum values. In this case, the Hyper-V host is running fairly loaded and there isn’t enough memory available to give the virtual machine all of the startup value needed to boot.[Click]When this occurs, a Hyper-V Smart Paging file is created for the VM to give it enough RAM to be able to start.[Click]After some time, the Hyper-V host will use the Dynamic Memory techniques like ballooning to pull the RAM away from this or other virtual machines to free up enough RAM to bring all of the Smart Paging contents back off of the disk.
- In a hybrid cloud world, customers are looking at their datacenters as datacenters without boundaries – i.e., datacenters that can grow beyond one physical geographic location either into other datacenters they own, datacenters that are part of a service provider cloud or the public cloud with Windows Azure. To enable hybrid clouds for them, they need networking infrastructure that scales to growing demand and changes and that can support workload mobility cross datacenters. IT demands: Simplified use of network resources in a multitenant, cross-premises environmentTo enable multi-tenant IT services and/or hybrid clouds, there is a need to simplify the network complexity involved in migrating virtual machines – from changing IP addresses, modifying applications, changing network ACLs etc.WS12R2 delivers: Software-defined network infrastructureSoftware-defined networking enhances the management of modern networks by providing the ability for applications to control access to network resources dynamically. A key enabler of SDN is that it uses networking functionality that has been moved to the virtual switch, providing the ability to modify packets in transit and enabling integration of more advanced switch extensions. Finally, SDN also brings the benefit of unifying the management of both the physical and virtual infrastructure. Among other things, new features and updates in Windows Server 2012 R2 include:- Hyper-V Network Virtualization:With Hyper‑V Network Virtualization in Windows Server 2012 R2, you can isolate network traffic from different business units or customers on a shared infrastructure and not be required to use VLANs. Hyper‑V Network Virtualization also lets you move virtual machines as needed within your virtual infrastructure while preserving their virtual network assignments. Finally, you can even use Hyper‑V Network Virtualization to transparently integrate these private networks into a preexisting infrastructure on another site.Hyper‑V Network Virtualization extends the concept of server virtualization to allow multiple virtual networks, potentially with overlapping IP addresses, to be deployed on the same physical network. With Hyper‑V Network Virtualization, you can set policies that isolate traffic in your dedicated virtual network independently of the physical infrastructure. On the same physical network, with Hyper-V Network Virtualization, you can run multiple virtual network infrastructures and you can have overlapping IP addresses with each virtual network infrastructure acting as if it was the only one running on the shared physical network infrastructure.- Hyper-V Extensible SwitchMulti-tenant site-to-site VPN gateway:In Windows Server 2012, we introduced a feature called cross-premises connectivity, with provides VPN site-to-site functionality (within the remote access role) to help establish cross-premises connectivity between enterprises and hosting service providers. Cross-premises connectivity enables enterprises to connect to private subnets in a hosted cloud network. It also enables connectivity between geographically separate enterprise locations. However, some of the limitations of this feature were that you needed one gateway per tenant (two for HA), you could only do host-level clustering, there were limited routing capabilities and a lack of Internet NAT.Consider the situation where a hoster needs to be able to connect customers to their own resources provisioned within the hoster's cloud environment. In Windows Server 2012, the hoster would have to provide a separate server to server (S2S) virtual private networking (VPN) virtual machine for each customer or implement a third-party multi-tenant VPN gateway. Now with Windows Server 2012 R2, you no longer require a separate third-party multi-tenant VPN gateway, as this feature is now built in to the operating system. This function can provide a seamless connection over a S2S VPN link between multiple external organizations and the resources that those organizations own in a hosted cloud. It also enables connectivity between physical and virtual networks, enterprise data centers, and hosting organizations, and between enterprise networks and Windows Azure. High availability is provided through guest clustering using a hot standby node available. A dynamic link library ensures any routing configuration is synced from the active node to the hot standby, and when the standby becomes active, the routing configuration is applied. To ensure that routes are updated dynamically, Windows Server 2012 R2 implements Border Gateway Protocol and incorporates multitenant-aware Network Address Translation (NAT) for Internet access.- Standards-based switch configuration:Today’s datacenters are made up of different classes of devices – e.g. load balancers, power distribution units, baseboard management controllers (BMCs), top-of-rack (TOR) switches, routers, etc. - from a variety of device manufacturers. With the explosion of datacenters the need to automate management of such devices in a consistent way is more important than ever. Since most of these devices are managed via different protocols and schemas, and in some instances, proprietary solutions, customers are asking for a consistent developer abstraction layer for interacting with the wide array of devices & vendors, similar to the Hardware Abstraction Layer that Windows provides to application developers.One of the core innovations of Windows Server 2012 was Standards Based Management. As part of this effort, a significant amount of work was done in the management stack of Windows Server 2012 to make WMI + WSMan + PowerShell work with devices that implement DMTF's CIM standards. As a continuation of this effort, Windows Server 2012 R2 includes a device management abstraction layer – referred to as the datacenter abstraction layer (DAL) - that further reduces the complexity of heterogeneous device management., with the goal that devices can be easily managed and configured using standards technologies and based on the same DAL architecture. Windows Server 2012 R2 will allow customers to 1) enable device management using a common abstraction layer, working over standard protocol and schema; 2) move from a complex datacenter device world into a world of well-defined, standard based components; and 3) build ready to use solution for device management right in Windows.IT demands: Continuously available and resilient network infrastructure:IT needs to help ensure that services are running continuously without any interruption. This means that there is automatic recovery from both software and hardware failures, with the need for an IT Pro or network administrator to fix issues in the middle of night now eliminated. Imagine multiple services sharing common infrastructure and having the ability to get a consistent bandwidth for each of these services and finally provide a common infrastructure that supports a heterogeneous/multi vendor environment.WS12R2 delivers: High-performance networking:Customers want to get the best performance out of the hardware they have – whether they are industry standard hardware or high end hardware that they have already invested in. Poor network performance are primarily because of two reasons – limitations in network bandwidth, limitations in the processing power -, and these typically affect availability and resiliency of the network infrastructure directly. A considerable amount of work has been done in Windows Server 2012 R2 to extract great and predictable performance inbox, as well as to make the most out of next generation hardware.Among other things, new features and updates in Windows Server 2012 R2 include:SMB Direct (RDMA)Single Root I/O Virtualization:Single Root I/O Virtualization (SR-IOV) is a standard introduced by the PCI-SIG, the special-interest group that owns and manages PCI specifications as open industry standards. SR-IOV works in conjunction with system chipset support for virtualization technologies that provide remapping of interrupts and Direct Memory Access, and allows SR-IOV-capable devices to be assigned directly to a virtual machine. Introduced with Windows Server 2012, Hyper-V enables support for SR‑IOV-capable network devices and allows an SR‑IOV virtual function of a physical network adapter to be assigned directly to a virtual machine. This increases network throughput and reduces network latency while also reducing the host CPU overhead required for processing network traffic. You can configure your systems to maximize the use of host system processors and memory to effectively handle the most demanding workloads.These Hyper-V features let enterprises take full advantage of the largest available host systems to deploy mission-critical, tier-1 business applications with large, demanding workloads. And unlike with competitive implementations of SR-IOV, key features such as live migration, high availability and fault tolerance are still supported.Virtual Receive-Side ScalingNIC Teaming:see separate slideIT demands: Greater control and more extensibility:Better manageability and controlis one of the most important challenges customers face. This spans from the ability to automate regular tasks to having the control over the entire IP address infrastructure, no matter what the size of your organization is, to having the ability to get the best performance on a multi-site environment, and finally to providing enterprises and hosting providers with a way to track resource usage and build chargeback/show-back solutions.WS12R2 delivers: Improved manageability and diagnostics:Windows Server 2012 R2 builds on the networkingadvances in Windows Server 2012 with an array of new and enhanced features that help reduce networking complexity while lowering costs and simplifying management tasks. With Windows Server 2012 R2, IT administrators have tools to automate and consolidate networking processes and resources. Among other things, new features and updates in Windows Server 2012 R2 include:Resource metering:Hyper-V in Windows Server 2012 R2 helps providers build a multitenant environment in which virtual machines can be served to multiple clients in a more isolated and secure way.Because a single client may have many virtual machines, aggregation of resource use data can be a challenging task. However, Windows Server 2012 R2 simplifies this task by using resource pools, a feature available in Hyper-V. Resource pools are logical containers that collect the resources of the virtual machines that belong to one client, permitting single-point querying of the client’s overall resource use.Resource Metering in Windows Server 2012 R2 can measure the following:The average CPU, in megahertz, used by a virtual machine over a period of time.The average physical memory, in megabytes, used by a virtual machine over a period of time.The lowest amount of physical memory, in megabytes, assigned to a virtual machine over a period of time.The highest amount of physical memory, in megabytes, assigned to a virtual machine over a period of time. The highest amount of disk space capacity, in megabytes, allocated to a virtual machine over a period of time.The total incoming network traffic, in megabytes, for a virtual network adapter over a period of time. The total outgoing network traffic, in megabytes, for a virtual network adapter over a period of time.Virtual IP Address Management:See separate slideQoS management:Since Windows Server 2012, you canmanage QoS policies and settings dynamically with Windows PowerShell. The QoScmdlets support both the QoS functionalities available in Windows Server 2008 R2—such as maximum bandwidth and priority tagging—and new features that became available in Windows Server 2012, such as minimum bandwidth. QoS minimum bandwidth benefits vary from public cloud hosting providers to enterprises. Most hosting providers and enterprises today use a dedicated network adapter and a dedicated network for a specific type of workload such as storage or live migration to help achieve network performance isolation on a server running Hyper‑V. For service providers, QoS management allows them to host customers on a server running Hyper‑V and still be able to provide a certain level of performance based on SLAs. It also helps them to ensure that customers won’t be affected or compromised by other customers on their shared infrastructure, which includes computing, storage, and network resources. For enterprises, QoS management allows them to run multiple application servers on a server running Hyper‑V and be confident that each application server will deliver predictable performance, eliminating the fear of virtualization due to lack of performance predictability.DNS traffic management:There has been increasing demand for a feature where the customer can control the resolution of certain DNS records based on the client information. With the advent of global markets and hosted server farms serving to different part of the world, providing geo-politically apt answers to DNS queries is required for better Quality of Service to end users. For the enterprise customers who want to deploy split-horizon DNS to separate the internal and external queries, maintaining two different versions of the server is a management headache. A solution to this problem is to allow customers to maintain the records at the same place while deciding resolution policies based on the incoming query. In Windows Server 2012 R2, DNS traffic management enhances the existing DNS Server Plugin to Custom Policy Plugin and uses ZoneScopes to provide DNSSEC support (including online signing and automation of key creation and rollover) for DNS data served by a Customer Logic.
- Talking pointsNetworking is fundamental to the datacenter and customers are generally familiar with how it’s done – so networking is just taken as a “given”. We believe there’s lot of upside in helping customers rethink how they approach networking (through a combination of software and hardware) in a private or hybrid cloud computing environment. To transform networking, customers need to think about networking in the same way that they think about compute – i.e. as a shared, automated pool of capacity. They also need to think about how to reduce operational complexity in networking. Finally, they need a solution that can seamlessly bridge on-premises and off-premises networks. To address the above, Microsoft is committed to delivering on an open, extensible & standards-based solution that has its origin in how we deliver networking for global hi-scale online services like Windows Azure or Bing. It turns out that our key learning is centered around the promises of flexibility, automation and control. Specific bulletsIsolated virtual networks running on shared network infrastructure – Hyper-V Network Virtualization in Windows Server 2012 is key to abstracting the physical network intricacies from apps/workloads. This is key to meeting the multitenancy and isolation requirements that exist in service provider or large enterprise IT organizations (that serve multiple LOB constituents or dev/test/production environments). This needs to be reiterated as it is the foundation of our software-defined promise and solves a key customer need today. Many customers have asked us for the ability to deeply integrate Hyper-V networking into their existing network infrastructure, their existing monitoring and security tools, or with other types of specialized functionality – to meet that need, Windows Server 2012 also introduced the Hyper-V Extensible Switch that enables easy extensions of our hypervisor platform. In-box multitenant edge gateway for seamless connectivity between physical & virtual networks – This software-based gateway will help customers easily extend their datacenter into a service provider environment by providing a termination point for site to site connectivity and enabling end-users access company resources that might be hosted at the service provider. Simultaneously, the gateway will be multitenant aware and hence enables the service provider to drive operational efficiency by enabling multiple customer connections terminate on it. More importantly, the gateway enables seamless bridging between the customers’ physical and virtual networks (NV-GRE based) by offering the necessary translation, thereby enabling broader adoption of hybrid networking with bring-your-own-IP (BYOIP) enablement. It should be noted that System Center Virtual Machine Manager is needed to provision and configure remote access and Hyper-V Network Virtualization in this context. Self-service virtual network provisioning and management – Enterprises can easily connect their on-premises infrastructure to service providers by using a self-service experience to provision and manage connectivity and access. This self-service experience will be delivered through Windows Azure Services for Windows Server technologies that we’re now introducing to enterprises too. Standards-based automated network switch configuration - Transforming the datacenter involves abstracting storage, compute and network resources from their underlying physical hardware and manage them in a standardized manner. To support this thinking, Microsoft will enable a plugin for System Center Virtual Machine Manager to manage top-of-rack network switches that support OMI. We’re working with our networking OEM partners to assure availability of hardware that meet this requirement. Partner ecosystem support – A variety of partners have extended their support to offer solutions like merchant silicon, Hyper-V Switch extensions and NVGRE gateways. We will continue to work with these partners to offer customers the choice of networking solutions to best meet their needs.
- Note to presenter: 3 clicks to complete build.Windows Server 2012 helps you provide fault tolerance on your network adapters without having to buy additional hardware and software. Windows Server 2012 includes NIC Teaming as a new feature, which allows multiple network interfaces to work together as a team, preventing connectivity loss if one network adapter fails. It allows a server to tolerate network adapter and port failure up to the first switch segment. NIC Teaming also allows you to aggregate bandwidth from multiple network adapters, for example, so four 1‑gigabyte (GB) network adapters can provide an aggregate of 4 GB/second of throughput. In Windows Server 2012 R2, the load-balancing algorithms have been enhanced with the goal to better utilize all NICs in the team, significantly improving performance.The advantages of a Windows teaming solution are that it works with all network adapter vendors, spares you from most potential problems that proprietary solutions cause, provides a common set of management tools for all adapter types, and is fully supported by Microsoft.Teaming network adapters involves the following:NIC Teaming configurations. Two or more physical network adapters connect to the NIC Teaming solution’s multiplexing unit and present one or more “virtual adapters” (team network adapters) to the operating system. Algorithms for traffic distribution. Several different algorithms distribute inbound and outbound traffic between the network adapters. Team network adapters exist in third-party NIC Teaming solutions to divide traffic by virtual local area network (VLAN) so that applications can connect to different VLANs simultaneously. Like other commercial implementations of NIC Teaming, Windows Server 2012 has this capability.
- Windows Server 2012 introduced IP Address Management (IPAM), a framework for discovering, monitoring, auditing, and managing the physical IP address space and the associated infrastructure servers on a corporate network. Windows Server 2012 R2 adds virtual IP address space management.IPAM gives you a choice of two main architectures:Distributed, where an IPAM server is deployed at every site in an enterprise. This mode of deployment is largely preferred to reduce network latency in managing infrastructure servers from a centralized IPAM server.Centralized, where one IPAM server is deployed in an enterprise. This will be deployed even in case of the distributed mode. This way administrators would have one single console to visualize, monitor, and manage the entire IP address space of the network and also the associated infrastructure servers.An example of the distributed IPAM deployment method is shown in this figure, with one IPAM server located at the corporate headquarters and others at each branch office. There is no communication or database sharing between different IPAM servers in the enterprise. If multiple IPAM servers are deployed, you can customize the scope of discovery for each IPAM server or filter the list of managed servers. A single IPAM server might manage a specific domain or location, perhaps with a second IPAM server configured as a backup.IPAM monitoringIPAM periodically attempts to locate the domain controller, DNS, and DHCP servers on the network that are within the scope of discovery that you specify and allow manual addition of Network Policy Server (NPS). You must choose whether these servers are managed by IPAM or unmanaged. To be managed by IPAM, server security settings and firewall ports must be configured to allow the IPAM server access to perform the required monitoring and configuration functions. You can choose to manually configure these settings or use Group Policy objects (GPOs) to configure them automatically. If you choose the automatic method, settings are applied when a server is marked as managed, and settings are removed when it is marked as unmanaged.The IPAM server communicates with managed servers by using a remote procedure call (RPC) or WMI interface, as shown here. IPAM monitors domain controllers and servers running NPS for IP address tracking purposes. In addition to monitoring functions, several DHCP server and scope properties can be configured by using IPAM. Zone status monitoring and a limited set of configuration functions are also available for DNS servers.IPAM supports Active Directory–based auto-discovery of DNS and DHCP servers on the network. Discovery is based on the domains and server roles selected during configuration of the scope of discovery.IPAM discovers the domain controller, DNS servers, and DHCP servers in the network and confirms their availability based on role-specific protocol transactions. In addition to automatic discovery, IPAM also supports the manual addition of a server to the list of servers in the IPAM system.Managed serversConfiguring the manageability status of a server as Managed indicates that it is part of the IPAM server’s managed environment. Data is retrieved from managed servers to display in various IPAM views. The type of data that is gathered depends on the server role.Unmanaged serversConfiguring the manageability status of a server as Unmanaged indicates that the server is considered to be outside the IPAM server’s managed environment. No data is collected by IPAM from these servers.IPAM data collection tasksIPAM schedules the following tasks to retrieve data from managed servers to populate the IPAM views for monitoring and management. You can also modify these tasks by using Task Scheduler.Server Discovery. Automatically discovers domain controllers, DHCP servers, and DNS servers in the domains that you select.Server Configuration. Collects configuration information from DHCP and DNS servers for display in IP address space and server management functions.Address Use. Collects IP address space use data from DHCP servers for display of current and historical use.Event Collection. Collects DHCP and IPAM server operational events. Also collects events from domain controllers, NPS, and DHCP servers for IP address tracking.Server Availability. Collects service status information from DHCP and DNS servers.Service Monitoring. Collects DNS zone status events from DNS servers.Address Expiry. Tracks IP address expiry state and logs notifications.
- Microsoft has been introducing several new storage features with Windows Server 2012, and is further expanding the range of capabilities and benefits with Windows Server 2012 R2. These innovative features and capabilities extend functionality in profound ways, including the ability to leverage inexpensive storage to create highly available, robust, and high performing storage solutions. These new Microsoft storage capabilities add dynamic functionality on each server and can work together to further enhance functionality at scale in large enterprise environments.IT demands: Less expensive, enterprise-class storage solution:Enterprise class performance and scale have traditionally been associated with high-end storage solutions. But not everyone can afford an expensive SAN – most customers are looking at options that gives them the same kind of reliability, resiliency and availability that high-end solutions offers but at the cost of industry-standard hardware.WS12R2 delivers: High-performance, reliable storage on industry-standard hardware:Leveraging industry-standard hardware as opposedto costly purpose-built storage devices orconverged infrastructure hardware, Windows Server 2012 R2 is a cost-effective way of pursuing IT demands for high-performance and highly available storage: By adding new storage options,new file server scenarios and new features that help preserve uptime, the use of industry-standard hardware can help drive cost efficiency dramatically. Among other things, new features and updates in Windows Server 2012 R2 include:Storage Spaces with tiering:See separate slideSMB Direct (RDMA):SinceWindows Server 2012, the SMB protocol includes support for Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA) network adapters, which allows storage performance capabilities that rival Fiber Channel. RDMA network adapters enable this performance capability by operating at full speed with very low latency due to the ability to bypass the kernel and perform write and read operations directly to and from memory. This capability is possible since reliable transport protocols are implemented on the adapter hardware and allow for zero-copy networking with kernel bypass.With this capability, applications, including SMB, can perform data transfers directly from memory, through the adapter, to the network, and then to the memory of the application requesting data from the file share. Data deduplicationOffloaded Data Transfer (ODX)Native NVMe supportIT demands: Guaranteed high levels of Service Level Agreement (SLA):Hardware fails, hardware needs to be replaced as they are close to their EOL, software requires patches and operating systems have to be updated and most organizations are used to this cycle. What doesn’t change is the SLA they have with their internal and external customers. Application owners still require uninterrupted access to their resources or services that you, as an enterprise or cloud datacenter administrator are providing them. WS12R2 delivers: Continuous application availability:Windows Server 2012 R2 reduces server downtime and application disruption by letting you store server application data on file shares and obtain a similar level of reliability, availability, manageability, and high performance that would typically be expected from a high-end Storage Area Network (SAN). Among other things, new features and updates in Windows Server 2012 R2 include:SMB Transparent Failover:Introduces in Windows Server 2012, SMB Transparent Failover allows you to transparently move SMB file shares between the file server cluster nodes, without interruption of service for the SMB client. This is useful for planned events (for example, when you need to perform maintenance on a node) or surprise events (for example, when a hardware failure causes a node to fail). This is achieved regardless of the kind of operation that was underway when the failure occurred.SMB MultichannelPer-share SMB Scale-out:One the main advantages of file storage over block storage is the ease of configuration, paired with the ability to configure folders that can be shared by multiple clients. SMB takes this one step further by introducing the SMB Scale-Out feature, which provides the ability to share the same folders from multiple nodes of the same cluster. This is made possible by the use of Cluster Shared Volume (CSV), which since Windows Server 2012 supports file sharing. For example, if you have a four-node file server cluster using SMB Scale-Out, an SMB client will be able to access the share from any of the four nodes. This active-active configuration lets you balance the load across cluster nodes by allowing an administrator to move clients without any service interruption. The following enhancements are new in Windows Server 2012 R2: Instead of per file server, SMB sessions can now also be managed per share. Scale-Out File Server clients are automatically redirected to best node with the nest storage connectivity, minimizing redirection traffic. Also, new in Windows Server 2012 R2, SMB Scale-out offers finer-grained load distribution by distributing workloads from a single client across many nodes of a scale-out file server.- Cluster-aware UpdatingWindows Azure Hyper-V Recovery Manager:see separate slideIT demands: Efficient management of storage resources:Whether customers use high-end storage solutions or industry standard solutions, efficiency of the use and management of valuable storage resources is critical. Not surprisingly, therefore, one of the most important focal areas is around managing the storage infrastructure both from a capacity and availability perspective. Customers are looking for efficient management and backup options that would let them manage their diverse infrastructure and have the ability to automate some of their mundane tasks.WS12R2 delivers: Comprehensive storage management and backup:Windows Server 2012 R2 provide great management and backup capabilities that help you better manage your storage capacity whether you have a single server or multiple servers, whether you have one class of storage or a variety of storage solutions, and whether you have a Windows only or a heterogeneous environment. Among other things, new features and updates in Windows Server 2012 R2 include:Online VHDX resize:Online VHDX resize allows for greater storage flexibility by allowing a virtual SCSI disk to either grow or shrink the VHDX file whilst attached to a running virtual machine. Thus the volume within the guest can be dynamically either expanded or reduced.Storage QoS:StorageQoS allows you to restrict disk throughput for overactive/disruptive virtual machines and can be configured dynamically while the virtual machine is running. For maximum bandwidth applications, it provides strict policies to throttle IO to a given VHD/VHDX to a maximum IO threshold. For minimum bandwidth applications, it provides policies for threshold warnings thatalert of an IO starved VHD/VHDX when the bandwidth does not meet the minimum threshold.Unified storage management (SMI-S and WMI):To help improve storage management efficiency and offset that cost, Windows Server 2012 R2comes with a set of storage management APIs and provider interfaces that will enable administrators to centrally manage disparate storage resources and solutions, like SANs and storage arrays, from a centralized “single pane of glass” interface. Manageable resources can include SANs that are SMI-S complaint, storage devices with proprietary hardware that has compatible third-party storage management providers, or storage devices that are already being allocated through the use of Storage Spaces. This storage management capability will allow administrators to configure and manage all of the storage devices throughout their organization or management sphere through an easy-to-use management interface that they are already familiar with, the Server Manager. By using Server Manager, administrators can populate server groups with file servers or storage clusters that leverage Storage Spaces, or reach out to populate manageable devices that have SMI-S agents enabled.SMI-S Provider for iSCSI TargetImproved SMB diagnosabilityWindows Azure Backup:see separate slide
- This slide talks about the variety of storage innovation that Microsoft is driving forward with Windows Server 2012 R2 for on-premises as well as cloud-integrated contexts. As their storage needs keep growing, customers have a great opportunity to drive up storage reliability while driving down costs/ complexity. Storage tiering Storage tiering is an exciting example of how we’re driving storage cost-performance with industry standard hardware. The key principle here is to use low cost-high capacity spinning disks to store less frequently used data and reserve the high-speed solid state disks to store frequently used data. Storage tiering builds on storage virtualization offered by Storage Spaces by assigning solid state drives (SSD) and hard disk drives (HDD) to the same storage pool and using them as different tiers in the same tiered space.Windows Server recognizes the tiers and optimizes them by moving often used “hot” data to the SSD tier. Windows tracks data temperature and moves data at the sub-file level; only “hot” regions of a file (VHD, database, etc.) need to move to SSDs, the “cold” regions can reside on HDDs. Additional talking points:Performance improvements in file-based application storage – This will build on the innovation Microsoft delivered in Windows Server 2012 to deliver greater performance in file-based storage for workloads, including SQL Server. As an example, we expect significant IOPS improvements for a few IO classes, including SQL OLTP workloads. StorSimple cloud-integrated storage and Windows Azure – We will continue to integrateStorSimple from an engineering, marketing and business model standpoint.Flexible data protection with Windows Azure Backup – Windows Azure Backup integrates with the familiar backup tools in Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2012 Essentials, and System Center 2012 Data Protection Manager so customers protect important server data offsite with automated backups to Azure, where it is available for easy data restoration. Windows Azure Backup is in public paid preview as of April 2013. As per current POR, we expect this service to be commercially available later this year.
- Windows Azure Hyper-V Recovery Manager helps simplify the task of delivering service availability. For organizations with two or more datacenters looking to protect vital workloads running in their private cloud, Windows Azure Hyper-V Recovery Manager enables them to combine Windows Azure, System Center and Hyper-V Replica to deliver business continuity of workloads. Note Currently, the Hyper-V Recovery Manager feature is being offered as a limited customer preview to customers selected via an application process.Windows Azure Hyper-V Recovery Manager provides:Automated Protection:Private clouds can be protected by automating the replication of the virtual machines that compose them at a secondary location. The ongoing asynchronous replication of each VM is provided by Windows Server Hyper-V Replica. All communications with Windows Azure is encrypted and limited to the System Center Virtual Machine Manager server in each datacenter. Continuous Health Monitoring:Service availability at the primary datacenter is monitored by Windows Azure Hyper-V Recovery Manager on an ongoing basis. Workload data is not transferred to Windows Azure.Orchestrated Recovery:The service helps automate the orderly recovery of services in the event of a site outage at the primary datacenter. Virtual machines are started in an orchestrated fashion to help restore service quickly. This process can also be used for testing recovery without disruption to services, or temporarily transferring services to the secondary location.
- When you’re in any of these situations…If you have a small number of serves to protect and you currently have no backup solution or you are using the in box Windows Server back up tool on these servers, Windows Azure Back is an option. Downloading and installing the Agent onto the servers will enable the in box Windows Server tool to communicate with Windows Azures.If you are already using System Center 2012 and using DPM for protection and you want to keep replicas offsite, Windows Azure backup can integrate with DPM once System Center 2012 SP1 is installed. As with scenario 1, once the Windows Azure Agent is downloaded and installed on the DPM server, it can communicate with Windows Azure Backup service.If you’re already using System Center…You can start using Windows Azure Backup today – it integrates with Data Protection ManagerIf you’re a small business or branch office…If you have a small number of servers to protect, Windows Azure Backup integrates with the in-box Windows Server backup tools you may already be usingIt’s suitable for any workloadFile servers, SharePoint, SQL, Exchange, and others
- IT Pros today face the challenge of managing and maintaining an increasing number of mission-critical servers and services, all with fewer resources. Windows Server 2012 R2 addresses this problem by adopting enhanced standard models, protocols, and APIs, and by offering new and improved features in Windows PowerShell and Server Manager. Together, these enhancements help administrators manage multiserver environments and automate multi-tenant clouds more efficiently and cost effectively.IT demands: Consistent management of diverse datacenter resources:Datacenter infrastructure has become complex: Multiple industry standards are confusing hardware vendors, and customers are looking for guidance on how to best automate their datacenter while adopting a standards-based management approach supporting their investments in multiple vendors and platforms.WS12R2 delivers: Standards-based management:Windows Server 2012 R2enhances the manageability of datacenters through significant improvements in the standards-based infrastructure. It does this by delivering application programming interfaces (APIs) that are easier for developers and IT Pros to use. These APIs provide support for recent standards and add new kinds of Windows PowerShell cmdlets that make it simpler and more cost-effective to connect to and manage multiple servers and devices in the datacenter. Among other things, new features and updates in Windows Server 2012 R2 include:Windows Management Frameworksee separate slideStandards-based switch managementOne of the core innovations of Windows Server 2012 was Standards Based Management. As part of this effort, a significant amount of work was done in the management stack of Windows Server 2012 to make WMI + WSMan + PowerShell work with devices that implement DMTF's CIM standards. As a continuation of this effort, Windows Server 2012 R2 includes a device management abstraction layer – referred to as the datacenter abstraction layer (DAL) - that further reduces the complexity of heterogeneous device management, with the goal that devices can be easily managed and configured using standards-basedtechnologies and arebased on the same DAL architecture. Windows Server 2012 R2 will allow customers to1) enable device management using a common abstraction layer, working over standard protocol and schema; 2) move from a complex datacenter device world into a world of well-defined, standard based components; and 3) build ready to use solution for device management right in WindowsIT demands: Efficient, local and remote management of server resources:Customers are looking for greater flexibility and scale in managing physical and virtual environments, both locally based in a datacenter, and those that are located in a remote location from the datacenter.They want to be able to easily facilitate tasks such as remote role and feature deployment to both physical and virtual servers, or remote role and feature management, for their multiserver and cloud environments. WS12R2 delivers: Simplified multi-server management:Windows Server 2012 R2 helps to improve manageability in the datacenter so you can manage multiple servers easily with a clear and powerful role-centric dashboard, simplify the processes of configuring new servers, and deploy roles and features even to remote servers and offline virtual hard disks.Among other things, new features and updates in Windows Server 2012 R2 include:Server Manager:In Windows Server 2012, the deployment capabilities were extended to support robust remote deployment of roles and features. Using Server Manager, IT Pros can provision servers from their desktops without requiring either physical access to the systems or the need to enable RDP connection to each server. Server Manager can deploy both roles and features in a single session using the unified Add Roles and Features Wizard. The Add Roles and Features Wizard performs validation passes on a server you select for deployment as part of the installation process; there’s no need to pre-verify that a server in your Server Manager server pool is properly configured to support a role. Administrators can deploy roles and features to offline virtual hard disks from Server Manager. In a single session in the Add Roles and Features Wizard, you can add your desired roles and features to an offline virtual hard disk, allowing for faster and simpler repetition and consistency of desired configurations.Windows Server Essentials Experience:In the past, if a larger SMB that already had Windows Server Standard deployed but wanted the features that WSE provides as well they would have had to deploy an additional physical or virtual server with WSE installed to provide this functionality. In order to eliminate the need of additional HW or VM instances necessary to do this moving forward we have made the features of WSE a server role on higher editions of Windows Server. Just like any other server role, during setup (or later) the admin can add the WSE role and effectively “turn on” the great features WSE provides without changing their topology or HW setup. IT demands: Cost-effective management of more tasks:Increasing business agility by more efficiently managing services must come in a cost-effective manner. IT budgets historically spend 60 to 80% of the overall budget just to keep services running smoothly which means that the greater the efficiency of datacenter operations, the more money there is to focus on new services. In addressing these needs, IT Pros need to work within budget limitations by developing a standardized approach to managing server environments and look for opportunities to automate as much of the datacenter operations as possible.WS12R2 delivers: Robust automationWindows PowerShell offerscomprehensive, resilient, and simple automation of your Windows Servers to help you manage most server roles and aspects of the datacenter. Powershellsessions to remote servers are resilient and can withstand various types of interruptions. In addition, learning Windows PowerShell has become much easier than ever through improved cmdlet discovery,simplified, consistent syntax across all cmdlets and an integrated scripting environment. Among other things, new features and updates in Windows Server 2012 R2 include:Windows PowerShell 4.0:See separate slideIntellisense Integrated Scripting Environment:Introduced with Windows Server 2012 R2, the Windows PowerShell Integrated Scripting Environment (ISE) allows beginning users to ease into Windows PowerShell and provide advanced editing support for scripters. Some of the key features of ISE are:Show-Command pane lets users find and run cmdlets in a dialog box. IntelliSense provides context-sensitive command completion for cmdlet and script names, parameter names and enumerated values, and property and method names. IntelliSense also supports paths, types, and variables.Desired state configuration:TheDesired State Configuration (DSC) capabilities are a part of Windows Powershell 4.0 in Windows Server 2012 R2 and enable you to ensure that the components of your data center have the correct configuration.DSC is a set of PowerShell language extensions and providers which enable declarative, autonomous and idempotent (repeatable) Deployment, Configuration and Conformance of Standards-based managed elements.Desired State Configuration in PowerShell enables an IT Pro, Developer or a fabric controller to define the exact configuration of target nodes (computers or devices) andprevent “configuration drift”.
- We live in an ecosystem of windows and non windows devicesStandard models – describing instrumentation – based on CIM – how you describe and expose the management components for devicesStandard protocol – access to server/machine – WS-Man, REST, http or powershell remotingStandard API set – MIClient improvements, PowerShell and ODATA – all improved in the box.Helps consumers leverage these common tools to build tools and solutions for the Windows platform with greater flexibility and capabilityAs we move to a Cloud Optimized OS, this enables this.
- Windows Server 2012 Essentials provides an end-to-end integrated setup that installs and configures many of the roles and features of Windows Server 2012 according to best practices configuration for small business environments. This provides customers with immediate out-of-the-box value and productivity. However, because Windows Server Essentials 2012 has its own, non-standard server deployment experience, future investment of server deployment for cloud and hosting environments could have been difficult to leverage. Furthermore, Windows Server Essentials 2012 has to be a domain controller which usually rules out the possibility of Windows Server Essentials 2012 to be a second server in an IT environment.In Windows Server 2012 R2, the Windows Server Essentials user experience is integrated as a Windows Server role, referred to as Windows Server Essentials Experience. The server role integration enables the following technical capabilities:- Standard deployment approach with other server roles and features, including offline imaging.- Remote and batch deployment via Server Manager, which is optimized for hosting environment- Support for domain join and deployment on an existing domain controller, which offers more deployment flexibility including 2nd server deployments and branch office deployments.With these changes, more customers will be able to enjoy the benefits of the simplified Windows Server Essentials experience.
- Windows Powershell 3.0 was introduced with Windows Server 2012 and included the following new and enhanced features:More IntuitiveEnhanced ISE with IntellisenseSimplified language syntaxUpdatable help systemEasy command discovery and importBroader CoverageOver 2,300 cmdlets across WindowsSupport for thriving communityScript Explorer & Script LibraryGreater ResiliencyRobust session connectivityIntegrated workflowConnect/disconnect remote sessionsScheduled jobsPowerShell 3.0 is a better 2.0Many suggestions addressedOn-the-fly compilation allows scripts to run up to 6x fasterEnhanced interactive console experienceCore cmdlet and provider improvements
- Windows Server 2012 R2 is an open application and web platform that lets you build symmetrical and hybrid applications and high-density web sites for the data center and the cloud.In addition to the rapid growth of the Internet, more and more enterprise applications are moving to a web model, given the importance cloud computing considerations are taking with both ISVs and inhouse developers. Because of the increased agility and flexibility private and public cloud computing is offering IT, new application development needs to take into account that the application may need to run either on-premises or off-premises. Developers and IT ops also needs to think about how their applications can become scalable and elastic production IT services while meeting the service level expectations of the application owners and their end users. So being aware and managing resources of web-based applications is becoming a key consideration. Finally, the reuse of existing development skills and knowledge provides for a significant productivity advantage as customers roll out new apps.To sum up, key business drivers that call for an open web and application platform include:Building and running next-generation applications both on-premises and in the cloudOperating flexible and dynamic datacenters across premisesProtecting and gaining leverage from existing investments and infrastructureScalingweb applications while managing resources optimallyReusing development skills and knowledgeFlexibility to build on premises and in the cloudWindows Server 2012 enables hybrid and symmetrical applications across premises and private, hosted, and Windows Azure public clouds.This is important as developers need to think about how to build and deploy next-generation applications, many of which will be cloud applications. For example, developers may want to run applications that they developed for Azure on premises – programming symmetry and common development tools between Windows Server 2012 and Windows Azure can help achieve this goal.Programming symmetry:Windows Server is a proven application platform with thousands of applications already built and deployed and a community of millions of knowledgeable and skilled developers already in place. Windows Server 2012offers programming languages and tools, such as Microsoft Visual Studio and Microsoft .NET Framework, that span on-premises and cloud environments. With these tools, developers can work in a single, unified environment to build solutions for Windows Server and Windows Azure cloud platforms. Developers can use these programming tools across web, application, and data tiers for locally deployed applications and for private and public cloud solutions. They provide the ability to use the same development model between Windows Server 2012 and Windows Azure.This programming symmetry is complemented by the rich and comprehensive experience of working in Visual Studio. Whether developers work in house or as third-party solution providers, they can write code and use common workflows and rules to create on-premises, cloud-based, or hybrid applications from within a unified Windows development environment.Virtual machine portability:With virtual machine portability between Windows Server and Windows Azure, you gain the ability to leverage infrastructure on your terms: You can easily bring your own customized Windows Server images without changing existing code; retain full control of your images and maintain them as your business requires,saving you time and money. You can increase IT flexibility by enabling the provisioning, management and movement of virtual machines across on-premises environments and Windows Azure,enabling IT to use a common set of tools configure virtual machine workloads, andenjoying support of the Open Virtualization Format (OVF), a Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF) standard for packaging and distributing virtual machinesHybrid applications:Most organizations today are using—or are planning for—a combination of on-premises and off-premises IT resources and tools, resulting in “hybrid” environments that comprise on-premises and cloud environments. With Windows Server 2012, your organization can protect its existing investment in on-premises applications as you begin to move to the cloud, and you can manage your applications in a unified way. Scalable and elastic application and web platformWindows Server 2012 provides frameworks, services, and tools to increase scalability and elasticity for applications that support multitenancyand that improve website density and efficiency. This is important not only for enterprise ITPro’s, but also to enableservice providers to more effectively build, provision, and manage a hosting environment.NUMA-Aware Scalability:NUMA refers to a computer architecture in multiple-processor systems in which the time required for a processor to access memory depends on the memory’s location relative to the processor. NUMA provides the following capabilities:A processor can access local memory (memory attached directly to the processor) faster than it can access remote memory (memory that is local to another processor in the system).Modern operating systems and high-performance applications such as Microsoft SQL Server have developed optimizations to recognize the system’s NUMA topology and consider NUMA when they schedule threads or allocate memory to increase performance.Projecting a virtual NUMA topology into a virtual machine provides optimal performance and workload scalability in large virtual machine configurations. It does this by allowing the guest operating system and applications such as SQL Server to take advantage of their inherent NUMA performance optimizations.Internet Information Services 8 with NUMA scalability scales positively on NUMA hardware, which enables customers to benefit from existing hardware investments.IIS CPU throttling:In previous versions of Windows Server, there were ways to manage the memory, network, and disk size—but not input and output—per the Internet Information Services application pool.Windows Server 2012 Internet Information Services introduces CPU throttling. CPU throttling can be used to set the maximum CPU consumption allowed per application pool. Because the recommended setup is to create a separate application pool (sandbox) for each tenant, administrators can use CPU throttling to prevent one tenant’s application from monopolizing CPU resources needed by other tenants. In Internet Information Services 8, each tenant is an Internet Information Services worker process.The sandbox (application pool), ensures a high level of service for each site. The feature also can be used to create a new business model in which a client that pays more gets higher limits on the resources on the server.Centralized SSL certificate support:SSL certificates can be stored centrally on a file share in Windows Server 2012, which helps to simplify certificate management and lower the total cost of ownership.Centralized SSL certificate support in Windows Server 2012 is used to store all SSL certificates centrally in a file server, where they are shared by all servers in the server farm. Using the preceding example, the 20 computers will get the SSL certificates from a central location, so administrators update the certificate in just one location (they are no longer required to copy them locally to the 20 servers).SSL binding is much simplified, further reducing the cost of manageability.Centralized SSL Certificate Support in Windows Server 2012 simplifies SSL certificate management to lower the total cost of ownership.Adding a server running Windows Server 2012 takes minutes because there are no certificates to copy or import (certificates are securely stored on a file server). Administrators can configure the new server to use the certificates in the file server. Furthermore, the feature is designed to scale to support thousands of SSL certificates.Open web platformWindows Server 2012 R2 enables business-critical applications and enhanced support for open frameworks, and open source applications, and various development languages.This is important as the latest .NET Framework offers core new features and improvements, such as support for asynchronous file operations, and enhancements around web, networking, WPF and others. Also, with Windows Server 2012, web standards, PHP, node.js “just work”.ASP.NET 4.5 integration:Internet Information Services on Windows Server 2012 supports running both ASP.NET 3.5 and ASP.NET 4.5 applications. Similarly, the management infrastructure for Internet Information Services in Windows Server 2012 also supports managing both ASP.NET 3.5 and ASP.NET 4.5 applications. Both graphical and command-line Internet Information Services 8 management tools operate in a version-specific manner when reading or writing configuration information for ASP.NET applications. For example, ASP.NET administration modules running in the Internet Information Services Server Manager will display configuration options applicable to the specific ASP.NET version used by an application. With this feature, server administrators and developers can fully manage both ASP.NET 3.5 and ASP.NET 4.5 applications.Support for multiple languages:Windows Server 2012 offers support for multiple languages:Multilanguage support enables developers to choose from supported programming languages such as .NET, PHP, Node.js and PythonEnhanced support for PHP and MySQL is available through Internet Information Services extensionsInternet Information Services includes ASP.NET 4.5 integration and provides support for the latest HTML5 standardsSupport for open source software:see separate slide
- Windows Server 2012 R2 offers programming languages and tools, such as Visual Studio and the .NET Framework, that span on-premises and cloud environments. With these tools, developers can work in a single, unified environment to build solutions for Windows Server and Windows Azure cloud platforms. Developers can use these programming tools across web, application, and datacenter tiers for locally deployed applications and for private and public cloud solutions.This programming symmetry is complemented by the rich and comprehensive experience of working in Visual Studio. Whether developers work in house or as third-party solution providers, they can write code and use common workflows and rules to create on-premises, cloud-based, or hybrid applications from within a unified Windows development environment.Windows Server 2012 R2 offers the following components and features:Windows Azure SDK:Multiple updates to the Windows Azure Tools for Visual Studio 2010 that simplify development, deployment, and management on Windows AzureSame development model:With programming symmetry, developers can work in a single, unified environment to build solutions that can be targeted to either Windows Server or the Windows Azure cloud platformCommon workflows and rules across web, application, and datacenter tiersHTML5 or XAML-base for UI: New development platformApplication-to-application contracts that support HTML5 (Web 2.0)I/O operations that use isolated storage: Developers can create and maintain a safe client-side virtual file system for partial-trust applications. (In Microsoft Silverlight®, all I/O operations are restricted to isolated storage and do not use the file system of the operating system.)Applications cannot access operating system storage or another application’s space; access to system resources is brokered
- Non-Uniform Memory Architecture (NUMA) NUMA refers to a computer architecture in multiprocessor systems in which the time required for a processor to access memory depends on the memory’s location relative to the processor. NUMA provides the following capabilities:A processor can access local memory (memory attached directly to the processor) faster than it can access remote memory (memory that is local to another processor in the system).Modern operating systems and high-performance applications such as Microsoft SQL Server® have developed optimizations to recognize the system’s NUMA topology and consider NUMA when they schedule threads or allocate memory to increase performance.Projecting a virtual NUMA topology into a virtual machine provides optimal performance and workload scalability in large virtual machine configurations. It does this by allowing the guest operating system and applications such as SQL Server to take advantage of their inherent NUMA performance optimizations.Internet Information Services with NUMA scalability scales positively on NUMA hardware, which enables customers to benefit from existing hardware investments.
- The Windows Web App Gallery provides simple ways for millions of users worldwide to explore, discover, install, and deploy web applications on the Windows platform. Users have a great place to go to discover and install the web apps they want, and to share and learn from user ratings and reviews. Hosters have a simple way to offer and deploy the best free web applications to their customers. And developers get a easy way to distribute their latest apps.When an application is accepted by Windows Web App Gallery, the application is added to Windows Web App Gallery Atom feed. The Atom feed is consumed by Windows Web App Gallery itself, Web Platform Installer, WebMatrix, Internet Information Services Manager, and participating Hosting Control Panels.References:http://learn.iis.net/page.aspx/606/introducing-the-windows-web-application-gallery/http://www.microsoft.com/web/gallery/developer.aspx
- In a world of consumerized devices and mobility, there are significant new challenges customers are facing. The prevalence, speed, and availability of affordable high-speed cellular and Wi-Fi networks provide support for people who are increasingly mobile and expect to have access to both personal and corporate information from anywhere on any device. In order to meet these demands whilst retaining control and compliance, customers need to deploy and configure capabilities for providing access to corporate resources and enabling information protection. These solutions provide the means to manage a user’s identity across the datacenter and federated into the cloud, provide secure remote access, and define the resources and level of access users have to information based on who they are, what they are accessing and from what device.IT demands: Controlled access to corporate data from user’s device of choice:Users want to use the device of their choice and have access to both their personal and work related applications, data and resources; they also want an easy way to be able to access their corporate applications from anywhere.IT wantsto empower users to work this way, but they also see the need to control access to sensitive information and remain in compliance with regulatory policies.WS12R2 delivers: Always-on remote access from trusted devices:Windows Server 2012 R2 provides flexible remote access based on user identity to keep users productive anywhere, on any device.Among other things, new features and updates in Windows Server 2012 R2 include:Workplace Join:Windows Server 2012 R2 introduces a new concept known as device registration. Users can register their BYO devices for single sign-on and access to corporate data using Workplace Join. As part of this registration process, a certificate is installed on the device, and a new device object is created in Active Directory. This device object establishes a link between the user and their device, making it known to IT, and allowing the device to be authenticated, effectively a seamless 2nd factor authentication. In return for registering their device and making in known to IT, the user gains access to corporate resources that were previously not available outside of their domain joined PC.Web Application Proxy:The Web Application Proxy provides administrators with the ability to selectively publish corporate resources to remote users using managed and unmanaged devices, based on user, device, location and application, for secure conditional access. TheWeb Application Proxy allows IT to authenticate users and devices with multi-factor authentication; this means that as a user connects, they can be asked to provide not only their identity credentials, but also be able to pass additional credential challenges. The Web Application Proxy technically consists of 2 services:A generic reverse HTTP proxy that is used for publishing applications with straight pass through, e.g. NTLM & Basic appsA specialized reverse HTTP proxy that is used by the authentication service to support cases of certificate authentication (user or device) who’s client needs to terminate at the edge and transmitted securely to ADFS inside the network. Both are referred to as reverse proxies, and provide the capability for customers to either publish applications and use pass through authentication against the application, or to leverage ADFS and apply conditional access for granular control over how and where the application can be accessed. The types of applications that can be published this way include Claims & Kerberos web apps, Office Forms Based Access, and Restful OAuth apps.Automatic VPN connections:Traditional VPNs are user-initiated and provide on-demand connectivity to corporate resources. The user launches the VPN connection, typically enters credentials, and often two-factor authentication and a connection is established from the user’s machine to the corporate environment.New in Windows Server 2012 R2 are automatic VPN connections, which provide automated starting of the VPN when a user launches an application that requires access to corporate resources. The user may still be prompted for two-factor credentials, but the requirement to initiate the connection before starting the application is removed; it will start whenever an application requires it.Work Folders:Work Folders allows users to synchronize files, originating from corporate file servers to their devices anywhere through a sync service. IT can configure a file server to provide Work Folder sync shares for each user to store data that syncs to their devices, including integration with Rights Management.- DirectAccessIT demands: Common user identity to access on-premises and cloud resources:When users are accessing resources that are located both on-premises in a corporate environment and in the cloud, IT is typically challenged to provide users with a common identity. In addition, managing multiple identities and keeping the information in sync across environmentscan be a drain on IT resources.WS12R2 delivers: Seamless, single sign-on access to applications and data:Windows Server 2012 R2 provides a single view of all user information, allowing organizations to reduce security risk and lower the burden of managing multiple credentials. Among other things, new features and updates in Windows Server 2012 R2 include:Windows Server Active Directory:In Windows Server 2012 R2, Microsoft has enhanced Active Directory in a number of ways:Run Active Directory at scale with support for virtualization and rapid deployment through domain controller cloning. Virtualizing Active Directory in the past has been challenging, and was fraught with potential issues when administrators used common virtualization platform management tasks such as snapshots. ActiveDirectory has been updated to be “virtualization aware” and to respond accordingly.Manage Active Directory using Windows PowerShell, use the improved deployment experience and leverage the Active Directory Administrative Center (AD AC) for centralized management. The new AD AC centralized all the management tasks into a single location, making it much easier to complete everyday administrative tasks against Active Directory and associated features such as dynamic access control. Leverage cloud platforms to run Windows Server Active Directory and Active Directory Federation Services (AD FS)to reduce infrastructure on-premises. Microsoft supports running domain controllers and AD FS on Windows Azure IaaS, connected back on premises via the Azure Connect bridge, making it easier and faster for customers to connect and authenticate cloud based users, devices and applications.Developers can integrate applications for single sign-on across on-premises and cloud-based applications, providing a more productive experience for users and an easier way for customers to manage the identity of users within these applications.Windows Azure Active Directory:Windows Azure Active Directory (WAAD) works fluidly with Windows Active Directory to easily extend an organization’s Active Directory into the Windows Azure cloud. Providing cloud based identity through Windows Azure AD enables customers to use WAAD as the central authentication endpoint for all users and devices outside of the corporate environment, and cloud/hybrid applications. WAAD may be the authoritative authentication directory, or the user validation and device verification can be checked through federated connections to other directories such as on-premises AD, partners or other cloud based identity repositories.Active Directory Federation ServicesIn Windows Server 2012 R2, there are significant enhancements to ADFS includingsimplified deployment and management. Using the Web Application Proxy, Conditional access with multi-factor authentication is provided on a per-application basis, leveraging user identity, device registration & network location. The Web Application Proxy reads ADFS and makes it very easy to publish applications securely. Also, users can register their devices to gain access to corporate data and apps and single sign-on through device authentication. This registration process is enabled by the Web Application Proxy and ADFS. Furthermore, organizations can federate with partners and other organizations for seamless access to shared resources, allowing administrators to authenticate users from federated organizations, and organizations can connect to SaaS applications running in Windows Azure, Office 365 and 3rd party providers, providing users with a single sign-on experience.Domain Controller cloningIT demands: Protect corporate data and maintain regulatory compliance:As users bring their own devices in to use for work, they will also want to access sensitive information and have access to this information locally on the device.A significant amount of corporate data can only be found locally on user devices, which means it is not backed up or available for compliance classification, and it is unprotected in the event a device is lost, stolen or sold. IT needs to be able to secure, classify and protect data based on the content it contains not just where it resides, including maintaining regulatory compliance.WS12R2 delivers: Policy-based access and audit of corporate information:Windows Server 2012 R2 helps organizations keep corporate intellectual property secure and simplifies regulatory compliance. Among other things, new features and updates in Windows Server 2012 R2 include:Dynamic Access Control:Introduced in Windows Server 2012 R2, Dynamic Access Control allows you to classify and add RMS protection to important information on your file servers, control who has access to classified information through centralized access policy, and audit who has accessed that information.Active Directory Rights Management Services:Active Directory Rights Management Services protects Office documents and email by identifying the rights that a user has to the file. Rights can be configured to allow a user to open, modify, print, forward, or take other action with rights-managed information, allowing organizations to safeguard data when it is distributed outside the corporate network.Multi-factor authentication:Multi-factor authentication allows administrators to control access to company resources based on three core pivots: the identity of the user, the identity of the device that is registered, and the user’s network location (whether the user is within the corporate boundary or not).
- Providing users with access to the resources they need to get their job done means ensuring that users can access corporate applications and data wherever they are on their devices. Delivering on this requirement requires that IT can make these resources available, and at the same time ensure that only the right people have access to the information. To help customers provide these services to their users, Microsoft invested new capability in to the Windows Server Remote Access role so that IT can provide seamless application access and automatic VPN connections with conditional access to their users based on the user’s identity, the device the user is using, and whether the user is inside the corporate network or connecting from an external location.Now, in addition to on-premises resources that need to be accessed, the user is likely to also want to access cloud-based applications and services. So to make this a seamless experience for users, they are provided with a common identity when accessing cloud-based resources, which is enabled by IT through Active Directory Federation Services.As part of the decision to make corporate resources available to users on the device of their choice, you may want to require additional levels of verification. An example is requiring the user to register the device that they are using. When a user registers their device, it becomes known and “trusted” to provide device level authentication. This is achieved through the installation of a certificate on the device and the creation of a record for the device in Active Directory. IT can then publish access to resources based on registration plus the user’s identity.
- Virtualization Desktop Infrastructure (VDI), powered by Windows Server 2012 R2, empowers you to deploy remote desktop services architectures that provide employees the flexibility to work anywhere, while allowing them to access their corporate desktop or application environment from a range of devices. The unified management infrastructure for centralized desktops in Windows Server 2012 R2 increases flexibility of access for remote desktops and applications, simplifies compliance with regulations, and helps with business continuity scenarios.IT demands: Simplified roll-out and administration of a VDI environment:For IT Pros looking at deploying a virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), many questions quickly arise: Can you reduce your management costs with VDI? How can you deploy and update applications in a faster and less expensive way? How can you centrally administer and manage desktops as opposed to not having great control over machines thatare online?How do you make sure that they have got the right corporate policies and moving all these desktops into the data center running remotely ?WS12R2 delivers: Efficient VDI management:Windows Server 2012 R2 gives you a single point to administer, deploy, and manage a solution. Among other things, new features and updates in Windows Server 2012 R2 include:Wizard-based, automatic setup and deployment:Since Windows Server 2012, an important goal has been to ensure that VDI is simple to deploy and easy to manage. A simple, intuitive setup wizard takes customers through the steps required to setup a VM or session based environment. Selecting between one of the deployment modes has been simplified to checking an option during the setup process. Additional settings an easily be configured during the wizard based setup, thereby not sacrificing functionality at the expense of simplification.RDS creates and deploys the VMs for you as part of the setup process, thereby reducing the dependency for additional tools during the setup process. The VMs and sessions are also automatically configured with optimal settings, so users can start connecting to their desktops fairly quickly.Unified administration of published applications and desktops:The RDS administration console has been greatly simplified so that IT has plenty of options to setup and manage users, sessions and VMs from a single console.In addition to desktops, IT can also publish RemoteApps to both VMs and Session desktops using the administration console.IT can manage user permissions, including their settings and other properties as well from the same console that they use to manage desktops, thereby ensuring complete in-box management for a simplified VDI deployment experience.This platform scales into the 100’s through the GUI, and beyond that, you have the capabilities of powershellscrripting.- Streamlined VM managementUser profile disk:see separate slideIT demands: Reduced time and cost to deploy virtual desktops and applications:Storage is a key part of a VDI deployment, and one that has a significant impact on the cost of the deployment. Customer experience indicates that VDI is easily the most challenging workload for storage infrastructure, both in terms of IOPS and storage volume. Thus,it is critical to have a wide range of options with which you can optimize the output from your storage $$.WS12R2 delivers: Best value for VDI:It has been Microsoft’s goal to provide the best value for VDI and to give you the most benefit for your investment. Period. Among other things, new features and updates in Windows Server 2012 R2 include:Support for multiple, lower cost storage options:RDS in Windows Server 2012 R2 supports various lower cost storage, such as SMB based file shares, or Direct Attached Storage (DAS), in addition to SAN. RDS can separately configure storage location for Parent VHD, individuals VMs, and UserVHD, and use different storage tiers for each to optimize. High-performance, lower-cost storage options for VDI have become more plentiful, which means that customers do not have to rely on SANs anymore as the only option.VDI storage de-duplication:see separate slideActive/Active broker for high availabilityIT demands: Consistent Windows experience across devices:Users demand access to their corporate applications and data from anywhere they go, and on any device they choose. However, they still expect a familiar, consistent, rich and responsive desktop and application experience whether they are on the LAN or on the WAN, and no matter what the display capabilities of the device are.WS12R2 delivers: Rich user experience:With Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1, Microsoft introduced RemoteFX, which enables the delivery of a full-fidelity Windows user experience to a broad range of remote client devices.Windows Server 2012 and Windows Server 2012 R2 build on this platform to enable a far richer and easier experience on manytypes of networks anddevices. Specifically, the RDP protocol in Windows Server 2012 R2 enables a more consistent user experience when connecting to centralized desktops and applications, even on networks where bandwidth is limited and end-to-end latency is increasing. Among other things, new features and updates in Windows Server 2012 R2 include:RemoteFX for WAN:see separate slideRemoteFX Adaptive Graphics:RemoteFX Adaptive Graphics provides graphics processing that enables higher fidelity delivery of virtual desktop and RemoteApp programs, including video, text, Aero Glass, and 3-D experience across various networks, including those where bandwidth is limited and latency is high.The following are some of the key components that enable RemoteFX Adaptive Graphics:RemoteFX graphics processing pipeline and codecsRemoteFX Progressive RenderingAero and 3D experience that uses the Microsoft basic display adapterBy default, the RemoteFX graphics processing pipeline adaptively determines the optimal RDP experience level based on available bandwidth and server resource availability.Support for physical and software GPU:With Windows Server 2012 R2, you have a choice of using either a physical GPU or a software GPU on the host, and still always get a great user experience. If you do have applications that require 3D acceleration, because they are 3D and they are video intensive, we do support GPU used in the server, there is sub list of DirectX accelerating GPU’s that we recommend to use. If you have those in your server you can turn on the RemoteFX for GPU, assign that GPU to the virtual machines and then you can take advantage of GPU in the server. So you get the best experience for 3D, full animations, transitions, also the best application compatibility. RemoteFX USB Device Redirection
- Personalization is a critical aspect of the user experience in virtualized desktop deployments. In a standard physical PC, the user’s data and settings are intertwined with the apps and OS settings. This makes the desktop difficult to manage and it reduces the benefits of virtualizing it. What we need is a way to assemble to desktop from ingredient components. Windows composed of replaceable parts. User Profile Disk is a key technology that was introduced with Windows Server 2012.What is User Profile Disk?With User Profile Disk, each user of a collection is assigned a unique VHD that stores all of her settings and data. User Profile Disk can be configured for both RDSH collections and Pooled VM collections. As the user is logging on to that collection, the user’s UserDisk is mounted to the VM or the RDSH and her profile and data folders are mapped to this mounted volume. As the user logs on to other vms or RDSH servers within that collection, the userdisk roams with her, making her data and settings available within the collection.User Profile Disk appears as a local disk; therefore it works better with applications that expect to have local data access. This improves app compat.There are other technologies such as Roaming User profiles, Folder redirection, and especially User Environment Virtualization, which are designed for user data and settings isolation. User Profile Disk provides a container for all of these technologies. E.g.The RUP profile is cached in the User Disk at logonWhen FR is configured with caching, the cache resides on User Profile Disk.The per-application setting datasets used by UEV are cached in the User Profile DiskIn all of these cases, it is important to recognize that UserDisk is scoped to the collection for which it is configured. It provides roamable access within the collection. RUP, FR, and UEV enable roaming beyond the collection, and between different collections.So, what is the right way to deploy these technologies?We recommend that you deploy user disk with all Pooled VM collections and RDSH collections. There is really no downside!If you have multiple collections, or if you want user settings to roam between VDI and physical environments, then you should also use UEV. Folder Redirection can be used in such a scenario to provide roaming access to user documents, e.g. My Documents, My Pictures folders. FR is also a reliable way to centralize users’ data to a file server from where it can be more easily backed up and managed.
- New in Windows Server 2012 R2, data deduplication now supports live VHDs for VDI, which means that data deduplication can now be performed on open VHD/VHDX files on remote VDI storage with CSV volume support.Provides:Increased VDI storage densityFaster read/write of optimized filesImproved optimization speedAdvanced caching of duplicated dataMore space savings
- With today’s modern workforce, clients frequently need to connect from branch offices, homes, or hotels over low-bandwidth or low-latency connections. To support remote desktops and applications over WANs, Remote Desktop Services must be able to quickly adapt to different network conditions.Introduced with Windows Server 2012, RemoteFX over WAN helps maintain a consistent user experience over highly variable WANs. RemoteFX over WAN enables an automatic choice of TCP or secure UDP transport and it detects and tunes graphics to network dynamically and automatically.RemoteFX for WAN is integrated with the Remote Desktop Gateway.
- Generic question and interactive reminder slideWhat Twitter hashtag will we be using for this jumpstart to talk outside of the chat, besides our names?