#Linux Integration Services Version 4.1 for Hyper-V

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=51612

New with Linux Integration Services 4.1:

•Expanded Releases: now applicable to Red Hat Enterprise Linux, CentOS, and Oracle Linux with Red Hat Compatible Kernel versions 5.2, 5.3, 5.4, and 7.2.

•Hyper-V Sockets.

•Manual Memory Hot Add.

•SCSI WNN.

•lsvmbus.

•Uninstallation scripts.

When installed in a supported Linux virtual machine running on Hyper-V, the Linux Integration Services provide:

•Driver support: Linux Integration Services supports the network controller and the IDE and SCSI storage controllers that were developed specifically for Hyper-V.

•Fastpath Boot Support for Hyper-V: Boot devices now take advantage of the block Virtualization Service Client (VSC) to provide enhanced performance.

•Time Keeping: The clock inside the virtual machine will remain accurate by synchronizing to the clock on the virtualization server via Timesync service, and with the help of the pluggable time source device.

•Integrated Shutdown: Virtual machines running Linux can be shut down from either Hyper-V Manager or System Center Virtual Machine Manager by using the “Shut down” command.

•Symmetric Multi-Processing (SMP) Support: Supported Linux distributions can use multiple virtual processors per virtual machine. The actual number of virtual processors that can be allocated to a virtual machine is only limited by the underlying hypervisor.

•Heartbeat: This feature allows the virtualization server to detect whether the virtual machine is running and responsive.

•KVP (Key Value Pair) Exchange: Information about the running Linux virtual machine can be obtained by using the Key Value Pair exchange functionality on the Windows Server 2008 virtualization server.

•Integrated Mouse Support: Linux Integration Services provides full mouse support for Linux guest virtual machines.

•Live Migration: Linux virtual machines can undergo live migration for load balancing purposes.

•Jumbo Frames: Linux virtual machines can be configured to use Ethernet frames with more than 1500 bytes of payload.

•VLAN tagging and trunking: Administrators can attach single or multiple VLAN ids to synthetic network adapters.

•Static IP Injection: Allows migration of Linux virtual machines with static IP addresses.

•Linux VHDX resize: Allows dynamic resizing of VHDX storage attached to a Linux virtual machine.

•Synthetic Fibre Channel Support: Linux virtual machines can natively access high performance SAN networks.

•Live Linux virtual machine backup support: Facilitates zero downtime backup of running Linux virtual machines.

•Dynamic memory ballooning support: Improves Linux virtual machine density for a given Hyper-V host.

•Synthetic video device support: Provides improved graphics performance for Linux virtual machines.

•PAE kernel support: Provides drivers that are compatible with PAE enabled Linux virtual machines.

Designing Orchestrator Runbooks

Free ebook – Designing Orchestrator Runbooks:

blogs.msdn.com/b/microsoft_press/archive/2013/09/18/free-ebook-system-center-designing-orchestrator-runbooks.aspx

SQL 2012 Analysis Services Error: "No connection could be made because the target machine actively refused it"

In Microsoft SQL Server 2012, you receive an error that resembles the following when you try to connect to a named instance of SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS) :

No connection could be made because the target machine actively refused it: Port number

 

This issue can occur if the server that hosts the named instance of SSAS was configured to use IPv4 and IPv6 when SQL Server 2012 was installed. Then, the server was later reconfigured to use only IPv6.

 

To resolve this issue, follow these steps:

1. Stop the SQL Server Analysis Services service.
2. Open the Msmdredir.ini file in Notepad.
   Note By default, the Msmdredir.ini file is located in the following folder:

   %ProgramFiles%\Microsoft SQL Server\90\Shared\ASConfig

3. In the Instances section, verify that the values for the Port property and the IPv6 property are different for the named instance.
4. Delete the PortIPV6 property.
5. Save the Msmdredir.ini file, and then exit Notepad.
6. Start the SQL Server Analysis Services service.

 

Source KB

Windows Server/System Center MVP Speaker Series Starting This Week!

Windows Server/System Center MVP Speaker Series Starting This Week! so do not miss the fun

Anyone can attend because all of the meetings will be presented over Lync.  The meetings will also be recorded and made available afterwards for on demand viewing.

This week we will have two sessions and we’ll normally have one per week.  The two sessions coming up this week are:

• Automating Hyper-V Administration with PowerShell (Tuesday at 8:00 AM Pacific time)
• Keeping your CIO Happy: Executive Scorecarding with SQL, SharePoint, and System Center 2012 Operations Manager (Thursday at 8:00 AM Pacific time)

You can grab all the meeting invites for the speaker series from this location.

Check the details from there

http://blogs.technet.com/b/systemcenter/archive/2013/04/22/windows-server-system-center-mvp-speaker-series-starting-this-week.aspx

Accelerate your journey to the cloud with MAP 7.0 Beta

 

 

The Microsoft Assessment and Planning (MAP) Toolkit’s new capabilities help you assess the readiness of your environment for deploying Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012 Beta. This update adds eight new scenarios that help you build the fabric of the future while supporting your business needs of today. Included are hardware and infrastructure readiness assessments to plan your deployment of Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012 Beta, size your desktop virtualization environment, ready your information platform for the cloud with SQL Server 2012, and virtualize your existing Linux servers onto Hyper-V. The VMware migration assessment helps you identify opportunities to lower your virtualization costs with Hyper-V, and the licensing assessments now cover Lync 2010 Standard and reporting for active users. Download the MAP Toolkit 7.0 Beta and jumpstart your future today!

Key features and benefits of MAP 7.0 Beta help you:

• Determine your readiness for Windows Server 2012 Beta and Windows 8

• Virtualize your Linux servers on Hyper-V

• Migrate your VMware-based virtual machines to Hyper-V

• Size your server environment for desktop virtualization

• Simplify migration to SQL Server 2012

• Evaluate your licensing needs for Lync 2010

• Determine active users and devices

Key features and benefits in more detail:

Determine Windows 8 readiness

MAP 7.0 Beta assesses the readiness of your IT environment for your Windows 8 deployment. This feature evaluates your existing hardware against the recommended system requirements for Windows 8. It provides recommendations detailing which machines meet the requirements and which machines may require hardware upgrades.

Key benefits include:

• Assessment report and summary proposal to help you to understand the scope and benefits of a Windows 8 deployment.

• Inventory of desktop computers, deployed operating systems, and applications.

Assess Windows Server 2012 Beta readiness

MAP 7.0 Beta assesses the readiness of your IT infrastructure for a Windows Server 2012 Beta deployment. This feature includes detailed and actionable recommendations indicating the machines that meet Windows Server 2012 Beta system requirements and which may require hardware updates. A comprehensive inventory of servers, operating systems, workloads, devices, and server roles is included to help in your planning efforts.

Virtualize your Linux servers on Hyper-V

MAP 7.0 Beta extends its server virtualization scenario to include Linux operating systems. Now, MAP enables you to gather performance data for Linux-based physical and virtual machines and use that information to perform virtualization and private cloud planning analysis for both Windows and Linux-based machines within the Microsoft Private Cloud Fast Track scenario.

Key features allow you to:

• Incorporate non-Windows machines into your virtualization planning.

• View consolidation guidance and validated configurations with preconfigured Microsoft Private Cloud Fast Track infrastructures, including computing power, network, and storage architectures.

• Get a quick analysis of server consolidation on Microsoft Private Cloud Fast Track infrastructures to help accelerate your planning of P2V migration to Microsoft Private Cloud Fast Track.

• Review recommended guidance and next steps using Microsoft Private Cloud Fast Track.

Migrate your VMware-based virtual machines to Hyper-V

MAP 7.0 Beta performs a comprehensive inventory of VMware vCenter and VMware vSphere and recommends which virtual machines are ready to migrate to Hyper-V. Use MAP along with the Microsoft Virtual Machine Converter (MVMC) for an end-to-end migration solution. Key features include:

• Support for virtual machine migration requirements for Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V and System Center 2012 – Virtual Machine Manager (VMM).

• A list of underutilized servers that can be virtualized using Hyper-V.

• A VMware Discovery Report that identifies already-virtualized servers running under VMware that can be managed with VMM or migrated to Hyper-V.

• A Microsoft Workload Discovery that identifies SQL Server, SharePoint Server, and Exchange Server workloads deployed on VMware guests along with recommendations for migration to Hyper-V.

Size your server environment for desktop virtualization

MAP 7.0 Beta extends its desktop migration and virtualization capacity-planning capabilities with a new feature that supports desktop virtualization. With this, you can create a set of desktop workload models based upon performance data gathered from your environment and perform host capacity sizing for both Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) and session-based virtualization. Additionally, your desktop machines and devices are assessed for their ability to run Windows Thin PC. This feature helps customers and partners target candidate user populations for desktop virtualization, migrate to Windows Thin PC, and plan for the server capacity required to host and run session-based virtualization and VDI-based environments.

Simplify migration to SQL Server 2012

MAP 7.0 Beta simplifies your SQL Server inventory efforts. The latest version of the toolkit supports SQL Server 2012, with an updated SQL Server summary proposal, an overview of the benefits of SQL Server 2012, and a list of SQL Server editions discovered. This feature also includes a comprehensive report on the SQL Server licensing within your environment, reflecting the new SQL Server 2012 Licensing Models.

Assess your software usage and evaluate your licensing needs for Lync

The Software Usage Tracking feature in MAP 7.0 Beta is broadened to include Lync 2010. For Lync 2010, MAP provides a server inventory and software usage by device and user for Lync Standard features. MAP’s updated Software Usage Tracking feature provides consistent software usage reports for key Microsoft products including Windows Server, SQL Server, System Center, Forefront Endpoint Protection (FEP), and now Lync.

Enhance active devices scenarios

In response to the prevalence of user-based Enterprise Agreements, this MAP 7.0 Beta feature extends the existing active devices scenario by providing the ability to count users. Within an Active Directory environment, customers and partners can access both user and device counts in order to evaluate and manage their licensing requirements.

Join the MAP Toolkit 7.0 Beta program

Linux IS v3.2 is out

At a high level, here’s a list of the changes since v3.1:

• Synthetic Mouse Support: The virtualized mouse device is no longer bound to the VMConnect window, and can now be used with a RDP session.
• Merged Device Drivers: We now present a single device driver for both IDE and SCSI devices (hv_storvsc).
• Windows 8 Fix: The synthetic network device (hv_netvsc) can now be used with a Windows 8 host, eliminating the hang on boot that was previously seen.
• SCVMM Fix: This release fixes the issue as described in KB2586286.
• Improved Setup Experience: Users now only need to run install.sh (as root) to automatically detect the correct architecture and install the appropriate drivers.

In addition, I would like to mention a number of requirements and limitations on the use of this package of integration:

• The driver applied to guest virtual machines running Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 6.1 (architecture x 86 and x 64) and CentOS 6.0 (architecture x 86 and x 64). For earlier version should be used components integration version 2.1
• In fact, it’s modified drivers in the Linux kernel 3.2, but can work with the Linux kernel 2.6.32, shipped with Red Hat and CentOS

Steve Jobs RIP

 

 

A Call to the People and Governments of the Free World

Source http://www.manalaa.net/node/88008

We call upon all of you to support the Egyptian people’s demands for a life of dignity, liberty and an end of despotism. We call upon you to urge this dictatorial regime to stop its bloodshed of the Egyptian people, exercised throughout the Egyptian cities, on top of which comes the city of Suez.

We believe that the material and moral support offered to the Egyptian regime, by the American government and European governments, has helped to suppress the Egyptian people.

We hereby call upon the people of the free world to support the Egyptian people’s non-violent revolution against corruption and tyranny. We also call upon civil society organisations in America, Europe and the whole world to express their solidarity with Egypt, through holding public demonstrations, particularly on the coming weekend that follows People’s Anger Day (28/01/2011), and by denouncing the use of violence against the people.

We hope that you will all support our demands for freedom, justice and peaceful change.

Egyptian National Coalition

نداء إلى شعوب و حكومات العالم الحر

ندعوكم جميعاً لتأييد مطالب الشعب المصري في العيش الكريم و الحرية و الخلاص من الاستبداد و حث النظام الدكتاتوري على وقف نزيف الدم الذي يمارسه ضد الشعب المصري في كل مدن مصر و على رأسها مدينة السويس. و إننا نعتقد أن مساندة الحكومة الامريكية و الحكومات الأوروبية للنظام المصري مادياً و معنوياً ساعد على قمع المصريين و إننا ندعو شعوب العالم الحر أن تساند ثورة الشعب المصري السلمية ضد الفساد و الطغيان كما ندعو منظمات المجتمع المدني في أمريكا و أوروبا والعالم إلى التضامن مع مصر بالتظاهرات الشعبية و خاصة في يوم الغضب الشعبي (28/1/2011) و تدعو لاستنكار استخدام العنف ضد الشعب و نرجو أن تؤيد مطالبنا بالحرية و العدالة و التغيير السلمي.

Windows Azure Compute…

Windows Azure offers an internet-scale hosting environment built on geographically distributed data centers. This hosting environment provides a runtime execution environment for managed code. A Windows Azure compute service is built from one or more roles. A role defines a component that may run in the execution environment; within Windows Azure, a service may run one or more instances of a role. A service may be comprised of one or more types of roles, and may include multiple roles of each type.
Role Types:

Windows Azure supports three types of roles: A Web role-customized for web application programming and supported by IIS 7. These Web roles run IIS7. A Worker role is used for generalized development, and may perform background processing for a web role. A Virtual Machine (VM) role that runs an image—a virtual hard disk (VHD)—of a Windows Server 2008 R2 virtual machine. This VHD is created using an on-premises Windows Server machine, then uploaded to Windows Azure. Once it’s stored in the cloud, the VHD can be loaded on demand into a VM role and executed. Customers can configure and maintain the OS and use Windows Services, scheduled tasks etc. in the VM role.
Web and Worker Role Enhancements:

At PDC 10, we announced the following Web and Worker role enhancements: Development of more complete applications using Windows Azure will soon be possible with the introduction of Elevated Privileges and Full IIS . The new Elevated Privileges functionality for the Web and Worker role will provide developers with greater flexibility and control in developing, deploying and running cloud applications. The Web role will also include Full IIS functionality, which enables multiple IIS sites per Web role and the ability to install IIS modules. Windows Azure will also provide Remote Desktop functionality, which enables customers to connect to a running instance of their application or service in order to monitor activity and troubleshoot common problems.
VM Role:

The VM role functionality is being introduced to make the process of migrating existing Windows Server applications to Windows Azure easier and faster. This is especially true for the migration of Windows Server applications that have long, non-scriptable or fragile installation steps. While the VM role offers additional control and flexibility, the Windows Azure Web and Worker roles offer additional benefits over the VM role. Developers focus primarily on their application, and not the underlying operating system. In particular, Visual Studio is optimized for creating, testing, and deploying Web and worker roles – all in a matter of minutes. Also, because developers work at a higher level of abstraction with Web and worker roles, Windows Azure can automatically update the underlying operating system.

VM Role or Elevated Privileges:

The VM role and elevated privileges functionality removes roadblocks that today prevent developers from having full control over their application environment. For small changes like configuring IIS or installing an MSI we recommend using the elevated privilege admin access feature. This approach is best suited for small changes and enables the developer to retain automated service management at the Guest OS and the application level. When the customizations are large in number or require changes that cannot be automated, we recommend using the VM role instead. When developers use the VM role, they retain most benefits of automated service management (load balancing and failover) with the exception of Guest OS patching.

If you would like to be notified when these Windows Azure features are available, and when we’re accepting registrations for the VM role and Extra Small instance Beta as well as the Windows Azure Connect CTP, please click here . For more information about designing and developing roles, see Building Windows Azure Services.
Compute Instance Sizes:

Developers have the ability to choose the size of VMs to run their application based on the applications resource requirements. Windows Azure compute instances come in five unique sizes to enable complex applications and workloads. We are introducing the Extra Small Windows Azure instance to make the process of development, testing and trial easier for enterprise developers. The Extra Small instance will also make Windows Azure more affordable for developers interested in running smaller applications on the platform.

Continue at Source

Quote of the month

Quote for today “A lot of people have head in Cloud; but we need also to have our feet on the ground”