Essential Technology: A GCS Blog

By JP McInnis

According to reports from the Financial Times, Google is currently making a push to eliminate the Windows operating system from their offices. Users are now being offered the choice between a Mac or Linux workstation. Any requests for systems running Windows must be approved by the CIO on a case by case basis. This change is said to be due to security issues with the Windows platform and recent hacking attempts which Google believes originated in China. Other reports speculate that the internal implementation of Google’s Chrome OS may be behind this shift. Regardless of the reason, this is a noteworthy change in Google’s business practices and will have a major effect on its over 20,000 employees. 

Microsoft's announcement of RemoteFX finally brings the user experience in Terminal Server (now Remote Desktop Services) closer in line with VMware View and XenDesktop. I'm withholding judgment until we're able to test this claim, but the marketing promises look appealing. Its inclusion with Server 2008 R2 SP1 means this can upgrade can be immediately rolled out to existing Terminal Server users without any expense.

In this rapidly changing product, its difficult to keep up with the name changes. Remote Desktop Services is now the official product name. Session Virtualization is now the technology offered by Terminal Server.

Read more about RemoteFX here: http://blogs.technet.com/virtualization/archive/2010/03/17/explaining-microsoft-remotefx.aspx

The Microsoft US VAR Champions Club program is designed to recognize partners for their exceptional performance in delivering Microsoft technology to the marketplace. Var Champions have exemplified an outstanding level of commitment and were chosen out of an extensive field of partners for their leadership and impact in driving Microsoft technology in the U.S.

Eric Martorano, Director of Channel Strategy at Microsoft elaborates, “The Microsoft® US VAR Champions Club program recognizes our partners for their exceptional performance, tremendous contributions and outstanding achievements in the past year and highlights their commitment of delivering solutions and applications to customers.”

GCS is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner.

Just buy an OS license per user, right? Not so fast, there. Behold the glory that is the Virtual Enterprise Centralized Desktop or VECD. This special license, with an even more special name, is required for every virtualized desktop. And the best part is that it's only sold Per Device. Connect from your PC at work - that's 1 license. Once in a while from a laptop? That's a second license. Microsoft does allow access from home without requiring a second license. And you can receive up to 4 virtual instances per license, which is nice.

Per Device licensing has always seemed a bit strict for those organizations that nearly match in users and devices. Usually Microsoft offers both Per Device and Per User options. This is even more so for those users that login from multiple devices, which is a rapidly growing segment of the workforce. I connect from four different devices regularly.

Live Migration is the killer app in Hyper-V R2, which is due out in mere weeks. Microsoft finally can match VMWare feature by feature in many environments - or can they? If you don't want backups, Live Migration works fine. What? Again, please? If you're using Data Protection Manager 2007, you will not be able to backup VMs using Clustered Shared Volumes. Clustered Shared Volumes are required to utilize Live Migration.

Fortunately DPM 2010 released to Beta on 9/29. Not only does it add support for VMs using Clustered Shared Volumes but it also enables mobile laptop backups. The mobile laptop backups work over a VPN and are designed for the user off the LAN. DPM to DPM replication offers a poor man's disaster recovery solution.

Data Protection Manager is by far the best backup solution for Hyper-V virtualized environments. It includes brick level backup of Exchange, a SQL agent, and a Sharepoint agent. It integrates to Shadowcopy for backups of the VMs. All DPM agents are included in the System Center Server Management Suite, though you have to buy a seperate DPM server license.

Hold your breath. Live Migration is coming, just not quite as fast as the marketing indicates.

Come join us on October 1st at 3:00PM for demonstrations and discussions of these exciting new products. What will users like most about Windows 7? What three features separate HyperV R2 from VSphere 4? Can your environment use both hypervisors effectively? Our event will be held at Sullivan's Ring Side. Click here to RSVP.

This seminar is focused exclusively on IT personnel, in a management or strategic role. Engage directly with technical experts experienced in the installation and management of these products.

I hope you can make it. Your RSVP is appreciated.

Back in August, I introduced the various components of the System Center family. I also pointed out that the cost would of licensing each product, or even licensing a single product for multiple virtual machines, would be prohibitive for most smaller organizations. However, Microsoft has responded with the Systems Center Management Suite license that includes the licenses to manage multiple virtual machines using the full System Center family for a far more approachable price.  Here is what is included:

·         A license to run the Virtual Machine Manager server.

·         Management license for:

o   Data Protection Manager (DPM)

o   Operations Manager

o   Configuration Manager

o   Virtual Machine Manager (VMM)

This license is sold in two flavors:

·         The Enterprise flavor is licensed per physical server and allows you to manage 4 virtualized operating systems on that server. 

·         The Datacenter flavor is licensed per CPU (a minimum of 2 processors) but allows you to manage an UNLIMITED number of virtualized operating systems on a physical server.  When licensed for two CPU’s the Datacenter license is only about 25% more than Enterprise, and most likely if you have more than 4 VM’s you’ll have two CPU’s and will save money by going with the Datacenter edition.

But for small environments the biggest value of the license comes when using DPM for backup. But to explain the benefit let’s use a small virtual environment example. 

We have a Hyper-V server with 4 virtual machines:

·          A domain controller/file server

·         An Exchange 2007 server

·         A SQL server

·         A SharePoint server

The DPM protection agent also comes in two flavors:

·         Standard Data Protection which allows you to perform basic file level protection of a server.

·         Enterprise Data Protection which is required to provide protection for advanced applications like Exchange, SQL, SharePoint and Hyper-V

One of the benefits that drove this small organization was the ability to backup an entire virtual machine, which means we would need an enterprise DPM license for the Hyper-V server. When a Hyper-V server is protected with the enterprise license you are also permitted to deploy a standard DPM license inside any of its virtual machines. This allows us to backup the domain controller and file server, but the other servers would each require their own Enterprise protection license. So we would need 4 enterprise licenses.  Similarly, to properly protect all these servers with alternate backup products would require a special Hyper-V agent, SQL Agent, SharePoint Agent and Exchange Agent.

But, if this company was to purchase the Enterprise Server Management Suite they would be entitled to all the Enterprise DPM licenses they needed. And because of the new pricing, they would pay less.  Just 3 enterprise DPM licenses would cost more than the enterprise suite license. And on top of that you get management licenses for all the other System Center products.

There are two gotchas with this management suite:

·         The only System Center Server license included is the VMM server license. So you still need to purchase the server licenses for DPM, Operations Manager and Configuration Manager to take advantage of the management licenses included in the suite.

·         Despite all being part of the same product family, the System Center server product cannot all run on the same server.  Only VMM and DPM can coexist.

Because of these limitations it is likely that smaller environments will only take advantage of the VMM and DPM components of the suite, but it still offers a compelling value to consider.

For most users that skipped Windows Vista, the search features of Windows 7 will be an eye opener. I've been on Windows 7 for about two months. In those two months I have given up on browsing for ANYTHING. Search is faster, more accurate and grabs results that I didn't always expect (a newer version, etc). Search is much faster than browsing my start menu which is overloaded with dozens of apps. If I want to start OneNote, i just start typing One... and it filters the Start Menu for me.

More interesting are some of the advanced search features. WinExtra demonstrates extending the Windows search to automatically pull results from Twitter. The business value of Twitter may be suspect but integrating search to third party services is a heck of a feature.

Microsoft has long offered a number of system management products. Recently these products have been grouped into the System Center family of products.   The founding members of the family were SCOM and SCCM.

·         System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) is a highly extensible monitoring system. Because of its expandability SCOM can be configured to monitor an entire environment from network and server hardware to detailed monitoring of applications.

·         System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM), formerly known as SMS, is a powerful system management product capable for end to end management of both servers and client.

Historically these products have been targeted at medium to large environments. While smaller environments could benefit from the enhanced management capabilities, they could rarely justify dedicating servers to host these products or the cost of the server software. However, newer additions to the System Center family combined with virtualization have altered the playing field to a point that smaller environments should re-evaluate the potential of System Center.

Virtualization is probably the biggest game changer for the small environment. On the one hand virtualization gives smaller environments the flexibility to host additional isolated servers, like system center servers, without requiring additional expensive hardware.  The downside to this freedom is the increase in the number of systems that need to be managed.  If virtualization is added to a small environment without additional systems management capabilities the potential for problems and poorly designed environments increases drastically.

Data Protection Manager (DPM) and Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) are the newer members of the System Center family.

·         DPM is Microsoft’s foray into the backup software market. More than just another multipurpose backup solution, DPM is designed by Microsoft specifically to backup Microsoft systems and applications using the new concept of continuous data protection.

·         VMM allows IT professionals enhanced management capabilities and centralized management of virtualized environments large and small. VMM can be combined with SCOM for even more functionality to ensure optimal placement of virtual workloads.

As smaller environments begin to build virtualized infrastructures, DPM and VMM can become powerful, indispensible tools. But the cost of licensing of these products individually would seem to keep them out of reach for these environments.  Microsoft has release a new license called System Center Server Management Suite that addresses this issue, puts System Center within reach of small environments, and will be the focus on the next post in this series.

Windows 7's official release is imminent. Business Technologists must decide if they will deploy this new OS. Here are my official recommendations that are being made to my clients.

A Change is Required: Windows XP will not live on forever. Driver support is already waning. Technical support, including security updates, has a limited lifetime. If you have not transitioned to a 64 bit OS increased memory capacity for high end users will drive that conversion.

Users Will Love Windows 7: Most users are both technically uninformed and fickle. Vista's increased hardware requirements made it appear slow to most users. Windows 7 will not have the problem. It is aesthetically pleasing, fast and provides more efficient navigation. Users will love Windows 7 for the same reason many like Macs at home.

New Features: Can you quickly name the new features introduced in Windows Vista? Probably not, even though there were several great improvements. Windows 7 builds on that success with an even broader array of features including App-V/Med-V, Branch Caching, AppLocker and more.

If not 7, then what? Windows 7 will be the best option for the vast majority of PCs in the world. Linux desktops can't crack more than a few percent of the business desktop market. Mac OS X still lacks many network features and requires a new skill set for most IT departments.

Look forward to more posts concerning Windows 7 in the near future.

A new opportunity has forced me to look into virtualizing some or all components of SBS 2008. Up until our virtualization practiced has focused on opportunities a bit larger. I'm in a competitive bid situation and need to save some hardware costs from an onsite implementation.

Here is Technet article that reviews this scenario: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd239207(WS.10).aspx

The key points:

• SBS 2008 Premium includes 2 Windows Server licenses. You may configure this with Windows, Exchange and AD on the first box. The second box can be a Windows install with the Hyper-V role. You can virtualize another instance of Windows, on the second server, to host SQL Server.
• Microsoft also supports installing both SBS servers into VMs on one physical machine.
• It is supported to run a DC as a VM on the second box with some caveats.

And a few reminders:

• SBS 2008 reduced the maximum number of users to 50, from 75 in SBS 2003.
• SBS 2008 is 64 bit only installation. Virtualization is an excellent way to offer support for non-64 bit printer drivers and apps - such as Blackberry Professional.

Obviously the benefits of using virtualization in small deployments is limited and may add unnecessary complexity. By eliminating a server from my design specs I was able to shave about $3500 from a $15k deployment!