We’ve just released the latest version of Altaro Hyper-V Backup, which was renamed to Altaro VM Backup, offering the same, hassle-free, powerful backup and restore features on both Hyper-V as well as VMware hosts, all from within the same interface!
Read more – http://www.altaro.com/hyper-v/altaro-vm-backup-vmware-now-available/
Last year, Nirmal Sharma wrote a fantastic article on this blog titled 23 Best Practices to improve Hyper-V and VM Performance.
This sparked up a very lively discussion in the comments section; some were very strongly in favour of some items, some very strongly opposed to others. What I think was perhaps missed in some of these comments was that, as Nirmal stated in the title, his list was specifically “to improve Hyper-V and VM performance.” If squeezing every last drop of horsepower out of your Hyper-V host is your goal, then it’s pretty hard to find any serious flaws with his list.
“Just because a Group can be brought to consensus, does not make them right. Assess the Risks of being wrong before proceeding on their say so” — guy w wallace (@guywwallace) February 27, 2015
As you probably know, or can at least guess, I’m not the biggest fan of “best practices” lists. As I’ve said many times in the past, I think far too many administrators have an unhealthy obsession with performance and, as a result, build very wasteful environments. So, what I’d like to do with my “best practices” list is shift the goal. That particular goal is in my title as Nirmal’s was, but I’m also going to add it to the very first entry in this best practices list:
With this eBook you will learn:
Dynamic Memory is one of Hyper-V’s most misunderstood and underutilized technologies.
Many people believe that it’s not working when it’s doing exactly what it’s supposed to. Too many won’t use it at all based on incorrect assumptions. Most don’t understand the conditions in which it will operate. Unfortunately, there’s really not a simple guide to using it properly, or you’d find articles on it everywhere.
If you want to squeeze the most out of your virtual environment, you’re going to need to get your hands dirty with some of the grease that’s down in the guts of your systems.
05 Feb by Andy Syrewicze
Hello once again avid readers! We’re back again with our ongoing series covering Microsoft’s Desired State Configuration technology.
Today’s post will cover the concept of a Desired State Configuration Pull server and how to use that pull server as a repository for other entities in your environment to “pull” MOF files from.
We’ve covered quite a bit in this series thus far. Hard to believe, but we’ve covered all the topics on the following list:
Part 1: System Requirements and Benefits
Part 2: DSC Resources
Part 3: Generating DSC MOF Files
Part 4: Pushing DSC Configurations
As we saw in the previous post, pushing configurations has its uses, but it can be limited in the event that you want a more automated process. This is where pull servers come in. With a DSC pull server it’s entirely possible to create a DSC configuration, place it on a pull server, and then tell your target nodes: “I want you to refresh your configuration from this pull server every X number of minutes”.
This is really powerful if you think about it, as the push method is limited in its capabilities. We “push” our DSC configurations on our time when we want to push them. The pull method really allows for a set it and forget it approach.
The DSC Pull method also lends itself as a valuable tool for the setup of new machines that may need to be identical. Make a single MOF file, install the OS, and then point the node to the pull server. The pull server will install roles..etc..etc as defined in the MOF file.
So how do we enable the pull method? Let’s cover each step.
Altaro Hyper-V Backup is built for Hyper-V and designed to make backing up Microsoft Hyper-V VMs easier than ever, with refined and sophisticated features, yet affordable priced. You’ll be up and running in a matter of minutes, protecting your VMs by using flexible features for automated backups and offering a host of granular restore options to recover quickly and safely from hairy situations.
Contact or call us on 1300 787 142 for support or a sales chat on Altaro?
New year, new products! Some time in 2015, we’re all going to be graced with the newest edition of Windows and Windows Server, and along with them, Hyper-V.
I wish I had a slick code name to give you, like “Viridian”, but it seems like most in-progress Microsoft products are now just code-named “vNext”.
I’ve spent some time going over the published feature list. Some of the introductions will be very welcome. Some make me a bit less than enthusiastic.
The Features I Like
The Features I Don’t Care So Much About
by Eric Siron
In the article that contains the Restart-VM script, I mentioned that a VM that can’t be stopped with Stop-VM requires you to kill its VMWP process. It might not be obvious how to determine which process that is. I’ve written a script to help you do that.
This article is part of the “Hyper-V and PowerShell” series.
This script is extremely straightforward so it doesn’t require a lot of explanation. I opted to only allow you to input a single VM name at a time. If you use the pipeline, it will run once for each input object as normal.
As with the Restart-VM script, I designed this one as a function that must be dot-sourced. Please read that article for directions.
by Eric Siron
Like any creative work, a blog post is never really done; it’s just abandoned. Unlike many other mediums, blogs do allow us to easily refresh those older articles, but we so rarely ever do it. To close out this year, a few of us on the editorial team got together and selected a few highlights from the past year.
Our 14 selections from 2014 (in no particular order):
( http://www.altaro.com/hyper-v/hyper-v-portal-2014-year-review)
by Luke Orellana
The other day I ran into one of the most common issues IT pros have to face, file corruption. Out of the blue, one of our clients called in reporting issues printing from their Windows Server 2008 terminal server.
This was a VM, which was being hosted on a Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V Cluster. Users were not receiving their redirected printers at logon. It turned out multiple remote desktop services were repeatedly crashing. A read only Check Disk on the system volume reported evidence of corrupt system files. In order to repair the corrupt files, a Check Disk repair had to be run on the system volume which required the server to be offline. This process ended up taking over 6 hours to fully complete the repair resulting in unwanted downtime and lost productivity for the client.