Demo of 2008 R2 SP1 features and cool insight of SCVMM 2011

There is a wave of cloud in same way as there was a wave of virtualization 2 years back. Many big players are coming up with their own cloud solutions and cloud management softwares. Microsoft gave some cool insight about its cloud vision in Microsoft Teched North America convention being held in New Orleans, Lousiana. The most interesting for me was the next version of system center Virtual machine manager i.e. SCVMM 2011. The next version will be cloud capable and you can combine your OS images and server apps [using APP-V] in a profile/template which can be used to deploy services along with new Service Designer feature. Microsoft also announced the availability of 2008 R2 Sp1 beta by month of July. The 2 cool features of sp1 are Dynamic memory and RemoteFX and you can see their video Demos below.

DYNAMIC MEMORY



REMOTE-FX


Hope you enjoyed the Vidoes and for the key note Video of Tech ED 2010 you can visit here but for all these videos you will need updated silverlight as all videos are based on silverlight.

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Have you ever seen a running database server move LIVE between Data centers across Cities?

Disaster proof Zero down time solutions is the topic of today' blog and i will start it with last week EMC VPLEX announcement where EMC showcased their new solution which enables you to present LUN's accross a 100KM away remote Datacenter while the actual storage is not there but present in local Datacenter. Another capbility of their Metro VPLEX solution is Distributed coherent cache which makes long distance Live migration [Hyper-V] and VMotion [Vsphere] possible [see videos below]. Though EMC claims this is something new, HP CLX and HP SVC provides this functionality of long distance Live migration already. [see videos below]

The key new feature that VPLEX provides is that different nodes across different datacenters can simultaneously read and right Lun on shared bus which means you can enable Cluster shared volume [CSV] feature on those nodes and though the physical nodes are in different geographical location [limited to 100KM as of now] they can share the VHD files placed on a CSV Lun provsioned via EMC VPLEX. Till now this was only possible by using ISCSI based SAN like HP Lefthand, Dell Equalogic etc.

Another benefit of VPLEX is that it runs on a layer above storage so EMC and Non EMC storage array can be aggregated to create new Luns. Ok Fair enough, now you can have the pleasure of watching the videos where running database server move LIVE between Data centers across Cities!

EMC VPLEX - Simple, Scalable vMotion over distance


Hyper-V Long distance Live Migration with HP StorageWorks


The intention of the article was to give you a quick insight of new storage solutions including quick intro to VPLEX which can be leveraged for disaster proof datacenters. Hope you enjoyed the Videos!

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If you ever thought of getting exposed to Citrix Virtualization solutions & VDI

Many of you might have worked on Vmware and Hyper-V virtualization solutions but if you have not tried Citrix Xen Virtualization stack you are missing some fun especially as i found Citrix Xen as an economical product giving lot of features in free edition as compared to Vmware, which can be leveraged by SMB customers.

You can very well see that it comes with FREE Live migration, Xencenter management, Convert features. [ofcourse you can also use Hyper-V 2008 R2 server with SCVMM workstation edition [to manage 3 Hyper-V hosts only] again free of cost which comes with Live migration and High availability ] Below you can see a quick comparison of Free edition from Vmware ESXi and Citrix Xenserver

Enough of comparison, Citrix is Pioneer in virtual desktop infrastructure [VDI] and the purpose of writing this blog was to share some information on Citrix Xen Desktop Lab which i came across last month and found useful as it gives you easy exposure to Citrix based VDI solution and that too in a virtual self paced lab provided here along with very nice product Introduction documentation here and if you want to see detailed architecture please check here

Citrix XenApp can be used in conjunction with Xen server and Xen desktop and gives you a complete Virtualized environment. Microsoft is collaborating with Citrix and recognizes their HDX technology which provides rich user experience along with plug and play usb and monitor support and at same time Microsoft is also coming up with their RemoteFX technology to be used in VDI solutions. And if this was not sufficient to excite you, recently Xen 4.0 hypervisor was launched with nice features like Fault Tolerance - Xen 4.0 now supports live transactional synchronization of VM states between physical servers as a basic component, enabling administrators to guarantee a high degree of service reliability without requiring additional software solutions. [Pretty similar to Vmware fault tolerance feature in Vsphere] and Memory Enhancements - New algorithms, such as Transcendent Memory [very similar to Vmware balloning but claims to be better than it as it covers its shortcomings] [and in contrast with Microsoft Dynamic memory as mentioned in my previous blog too] have been introduced in Xen 4.0 to enhance the performance and capabilities of the hypervisor memory operations.

A free self paced training covering Citrix XenServer 5.5 and Citrix Essentials for XenServer 5.5 is available here and Citrix Xen Desktop technology overview can be accessed here. Hope you find that Lab and training links interesting and this helped you in learning Citrix Virtualization poducts.

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What is MPIO and Best Practices of MPIO configuration

I got numerous requests to cover Multipath IO [MPIO] on my blog so I decided to write about how to configure and best practices of MPIO configuration. Before we jump on those I will just define MPIO for starters-- MPIO provides the logical facility for routing I/O over redundant hardware paths connecting server to storage. These redundant hardware paths are made up of components such as the cabling, Host Bus Adapters (HBA’s), Switches, and Storage Controllers and possibly even power. MPIO solutions logically manage these redundant connections so that I/O requests can be rerouted in the event that a component along one path fails. MPIO is a Microsoft-provided framework that allows storage providers to develop multipath solutions that contain the hardware specific information needed to optimize connectivity with their storage arrays. These modules are called Device Specific Modules (DSM’s). In windows 2008 and later release OS ships with an integrated MSDSM.sys which can be used if storage arrays support either: Active/Active or Asymmetric logical unit access (ALUA) configuration.

So let’s say I have 2 redundant paths for my lun…if I do not use MPIO software [enable MPIO role in server manager and configure MPIO ] OS will see 2 luns in device manager and disk management.msc though actually there is only one lun being provisioned but from 2 different storage paths. Now if I start writing on these 2 luns it will be a problem for NTFS file system and hence the need for MPIO software. The MPIO software prevents data corruption by ensuring correct handling of the driver associated with a single device that is visible to the operating system through multiple paths. Data corruption is likely to occur because when an operating system believes two separate paths lead to two separate storage volumes, it does not enforce any serialization or prevent any cache conflicts. Consider what would happen if NTFS tries to initialize its journal log twice on a single volume. The vendor based DSM [more functionality as the vendor knows its storage and has more control and features] or MS based DSM provides failover and load balancing capability for these redundant storage paths and make sure that OS only see one path i.e. a pseudo device.

So now when we know why we need MPIO..let’s take the next step..enable MPIO feature—reboot---go to start-administrative tools—MPIO—Discover Multi-Paths tab runs an algorithm for  every device instance that is present on the system and determines if multiple instances actually represent the same LUN (through different paths). For such devices found, their hardware ids are presented for the Admin for MPIO’ing (they’ll get MSDSM support though).----on MPIO devices tab—it shows the hardware ID’s of devices that will currently be managed by MPIO whenever they are present. The decision is based on their hardware id (ie. Vendor+Product string) matching one that is maintained by MPIO in its MPIOSupportedDeviceList (this is something that every DSM specifies in its INF at the time of installation).

Many storage arrays which are active/active and SPC-3 compliant will work using the Microsoft MPIO DSM.  Some storage array partners also provide their own DSMs to use with the Microsoft MPIO architecture. These DSMs may be installed using the DSM Install tab in the MPIO properties. When vendor package is run on Windows Server 2008, the operating system allows the vendor DSM to be installed, but prevents the MPIO binaries already present in Windows Server 2008 from being updated by the package. Thus the end result of running the vendor installation package is to preserve the core MPIO binaries already present in Windows Server 2008, but the 3^rd party provided DSM is added. Remember that you do not need to install MSDSM driver.

Very cool..so let’s go to device manager and see the changes..

So you see for my local boot device..in device manager it shows scsi device [no multi path enabled for this disk and nor it is being managed by DSM software] however for my other luns that I have assigned to server via multiple paths..i see them as multi path disk device…right click on anyone of them….go to MPIO tab…you will see the DSM name..so this DSM is having handle on disk and i.e. MSDSM.sys….so this is an easy way to identify which DSM is managing the disk, if you have multiple DSM softwares on server especially in case when you have luns being assigned from different storage arrays. You can also see other details including MPIO policy which we will talk later.

PathVerifyEnabled: This flag enables path verification by MPIO on all paths every N seconds (where N depends on the value set in PathVerificationPeriod).

PathVerificationPeriod: This setting is used to indicate the periodicity (in seconds) with which MPIO has been requested to perform path verification. This field is only honored if PathVerifyEnabled is TRUE.

RetryCount: This setting specifies the number of times a failed IO if the DSM determines that a failing request must be retried. This is invoked when DsmInterpretError() returns Retry = TRUE.
The default setting is 3.

PDORemovePeriod: This setting controls the amount of time (in seconds) that the multipath pseudo-LUN will continue to remain in system memory, even after losing all paths to the device. 

So lets see what really happens @ MPIO stack and how device driver stack walks through in discovering, enumerating and grouping the physical devices, device paths into a logical set. (Assuming a scenario where a new device is being presented to the server)

1. New device arrives.

2. PnP manager detects the arrival of this device.

3. MPIO driver stack is notified of this device arrival (it will take further action if it is a supported MPIO device).

4. MPIO driver stack creates a pseudo device for this physical device.

5. MPIO driver walks through all the available DSM’s to find out which vendor specific DSM can claim this device. After a DSM claims a device it is associated only with the DSM that claimed it.

6. The MPIO driver, along with the DSM, makes sure the path to this device is connected, active, and ready for IO.

If a new path for this same device arrives, MPIO then works with the DSM to determine whether this device is the same as any other claimed device. It then groups this physical path for the same device into a logical set called multipath group. 

 MPIO has different failover and load balancing options and these may differ in case of MSDSM and vendor based DSM.

Failover, where no load balancing is performed. The DSM will specify a primary path and a set of standby paths. Primary path is used for processing device requests. If the primary path fails, one of the standby paths will be used.. Any one of the available paths could be used as primary path, and the remaining paths will be used as standby paths.

Note: With an array that supports ALUA, paths will typically be referred to as Active / Optimized and Active Unoptimized rather than only as a Primary path.

Failback is the ability to dedicate I/O to a designated preferred path whenever it is operational. If the preferred path fails, I/O will be directed to an alternate path, but will automatically switch back to the preferred path, with some DSM assistance when it becomes operational again.

Round Robin Load balancing where the DSM will use all available paths for I/O in a balanced, round robin fashion. This is the default policy chosen when the storage controller follows the true Active-Active model and the management application does not explicitly choose a load balancing policy.

Round Robin with subset of paths is load balancing wherein the application will specify a set of paths to be use in Round Robin fashion, and a set of standby paths. The DSM will use paths from primary pool of paths for processing requests as long as at least one of the paths is available. The DSM will use a standby path only when all the primary paths fail. For example, given 4 paths – A, B, C, and D,  A, B, and C are listed as primary paths and D is standby path. The DSM will choose a path from A, B, and C in round robin fashion as long as at least one of them is available. If all three fail, the DSM will start using D, the standby path. If A, B, or C become available, DSM will stop using D and switch to the available paths among A, B, and C.

Dynamic Least Queue Depth Load Balancing where the DSM will route I/O to the path with the least number of outstanding requests.

Weighted Path load balancing where a weight is assigned to each path; the weight indicates the relative priority of a given path. The larger the number the lower the priority. The DSM will choose a path, among the available paths, with least weight.

Not all errors result in failover to a new path. Some errors are temporary and can be recovered using a recovery routine in the DSM; if recovery is successful, MPIO is notified and path validity checked to verify that it can be used again to transmit I/O requests.  When a fatal error occurs, the path is invalidated and a new path is selected. The I/O is resubmitted on this new path without requiring the Application layer to resubmit the data.

Ok so now lets go back to MPIO settings see how a vendor or MS based DSM selects its device list. For a vendor based DSM software this is in the inf file which is used during the installation of the vendor dsm driver and all the supported devices present on the server will be seen in registry too. so for a server where I have luns assigned from multiple different storage arrays..i will have multiple vendor DSM’s installed and as soon as a new storage object arrives… MPIO driver walks through all the available DSM’s to find out which vendor specific DSM can claim this device… …[Microsoft DSM is contacted last in list of DSM providers ]….After a DSM claims a device it is associated only with the DSM that claimed it and problem is that lets say you have 2 DSM driver who will support the device….anyone of those can put a handle on disk and the other one will not even get a chance….and that’s why It is strongly recommended that the hardware ID for a specific disk device should be configured such that it is only associated with one DSM in the services key. This will help ensure that the device is only available to be claimed by the desired DSM, and will help avoid a situation where a disk is not claimed by the desired DSM, when multiple DSM’s have the ability to support a given device. This process may also be used to determine which DSM a disk drive could be associated with for troubleshooting purposes. Warning: Removing hardware ID’s from DSM’s that are not required should be performed by editing the registry keys directly, as removing a device from the MPIO GUI will result in the hardware ID being removed in both registry locations above and prevent the device from being claimed by the desired DSM.

When configuring a disk device to be managed by MPIO for multipath access, the hardware ID for the disk device is required to be present in two different locations in registry in order to be claimed by MPIO and the DSM managing connection to the device. These two locations are:

HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\MPDEV\MPIOSupportedDeviceList

AND

HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\\Parameters\DsmSupportedDeviceList

Last but not the least…the very nice feature of seeing all settings is configuration.log from MPIO-configuration snapshot tab

You can also configure MPIO with iscsi provisoned luns and inbox MSDSM  will take care of the luns if you have not installed any vendor based DSM from your iscsi storage array vendor. you can also use command line tool Mpioclaim for configuring especially when you are on server Core.

May be in future blog I will try to cover more on ISCSI boot capabilities. Hope you find this information useful and yes you can also capture MPIO trace but you will need to open support call with MS PSS to get it analyzed. Please refer MPIO step by step guide for more information and thanks for your time and hope you liked this article.

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Servicing a Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper V Host based cluster using Virtual Machine Servicing Tool 3.0

Microsoft has just released the beta of Virtual Machine Servicing tool 3.0. which manages the workflow of updating large numbers of virtual machine templates, offline .vhd files, and failover clusters according to their individual needs. To do this, the tool works with Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager (VMM 2008 or VMM 2008 R2) and with the following software update management systems:

• Windows Server Update Services [WSUS 3.0 Service Pack 1 (SP1) or SP2].

– Or –

• Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager 2007 SP1, 2007 R2, or 2007 SP2.

Version 3 of the Virtual Machine Servicing Tool adds features to service virtual machines on a host, virtual machine templates, .vhd files, and Hyper-V failover clusters running on Windows Server 2008 R2. This version also supports virtual machines running 64-bit operating systems.

Servicing Offline Virtual Machines in a VMM Library

Servicing Stopped Virtual Machines on a Host

Servicing Virtual Machine Templates

Servicing Offline VHDs

Servicing a Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper V Host by Using Live Migration

In this blog we will see the workflow of Servicing a Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper V Host leveraging Live Migration via virtual machine servicing tool. You can update Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V hosts without any downtime of the virtual machines running on the host. This feature uses the maintenance mode of Virtual Machine Manager and the live migration feature of Hyper-V.

The servicing job for this feature does the following:

1. Selects the first Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V host to service, and then starts maintenance mode on the Hyper-V host. This in turn starts the live migration of all virtual machines running on the host.

2. Waits for the Hyper-V host in maintenance mode to evacuate all the of the high availability virtual machines running on the host to another node of the cluster on the host without any downtime for the running virtual machines.

3. Invokes either Configuration Manager or WSUS to update the host.

4. Moves the original virtual machines back to the original host if you select this option in the servicing job for this feature in the tool.

5. Selects the next Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V node in the cluster to repeat these steps as needed.

To see more on Virtual Machine Servicing tool join its beta here . Hope you find this information useful.

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How HP Insight Control suite for Microsoft System Center integrates with Microsoft System Center Suite

Customers who are using Microsoft System center suite which comprises mainly of four products i.e. System Center Configuration manager, System Center Operations manager, System Center Virtual machine manager and System Center Data protection manager can now leverage Hp insight control suite for system center to to deploy, monitor and control their server infrastructure from almost anywhere. With this first release of the HP Insight Control suite for System Center, HP delivers Operating System Deployment (OSD) capability, Performance and Resource Optimization (PRO), enhanced inventory, the HP Server Updates Catalog, an ILO Advanced license, licenses for HP Insight Power Manager and Performance Management Pack, and HP specific management packs for System Center Operations Manager to optimize deployment, virtualization and configuration of HP servers being managed by Microsoft System Center. However HP ICE for System center does not integrates or adds any functionality for system center Data protection manager.

HP ICE for System center provides proliant server deployment functionality which enables system center configuration manager [SCCM] administrator to configure proliant server bios settings, bios boot order and ILO configuration from the SCCM console using a task sequence and then same task sequence can be advertised with OS image and settings resulting into deployment of bare proliant server using a truly zero touch deployment method. That means you purchase the proliant box and place it in the datacenter and rest everything can be managed via system center consoles. HP ICE for System center adds HP specific capabilities for deployment of proliant servers.

Along with operating system image deployment you can also integrate driver packages or proliant support pack along with other 3rd party software packages or Microsoft software like Exchange 2007 or different operating system roles like DHCP/DNS etc. so that once server is deploys it’s up to date with all patches and software requirements. Within SCCM console you can run inventory reports which will capture hardware inventory from proliant servers.

You can directly manage and control your proliant and blade servers using system center operations manager by installing proliant server management pack and blade system management pack respectively. However at this point of time management of HP integrity servers and VMware host servers from SCOM is not supported.

Hope you find this information useful and check here to learn more on Insight control for Microsoft system center.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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How cluster shared volumes Direct and Redirected IO works

Cluster shared volume [CSV] is a great feature offered with 2008 R2 failover clustering. Cluster shared volumes allows the different nodes of cluster to have concurrent access to the LUN where highly available virtual machine's VHD is stored. So in case of Live migration/quick migration or manual move/failover operation the LUN (which has been configured as a physical disk resource in cluster) is not dismounted and mounted which was the case till 2008 server. In server 2008 R2 both the nodes have simultaneous access to the LUN and both the nodes can read and write on the LUN where multiple VHD's of the highly available virtual machines are placed. This allows multiple VHD per LUN and removes the traditional one VHD per LUN issue. Earlier clustered virtual machines can only fail over independently if each virtual machine has its own LUN, which makes the management of LUNs and clustered virtual machines more difficult. Now that limitation is gone with CSV. From the last blog we know how persistent reservation works for cluster shared volumes and we know how both nodes are able to read and write at same time on the CSV disk resource. In this blog we will see how it works on file system level. But before we do that lets have a quick recap of cluster shared volumes below and here

To understand Direct IO, we will take a 2 node cluster scenario. Node A is the coordinator node as shown in the fig 1 and holds the CSV volume containing VHD files of VM 1 and VM 2.

                                                             FIG 1

Node A is directing read write IO and meta data IO [file renames, attribute changes, new file creation etc ] directly as shown by red and yellow lines simultaneously. At the same time I collected a perfmon and enabled new counters for cluster shared volumes. We can see in fig 1 that we have Read write IO along with metadata IO however as both the VM’s are running on coordinator node we do not pass any IO request to mini SMB redirector and none of the IO flows on network. Once you move the VM2 on node B the metadata IO goes via network [see fig 2]. CSV redirector passes over request to SMB mini director which passes the request from client side to server side and IO request flows to CSV redirector on coordinator i.e. node A. CSV redirector passes the IO to ntfs.sys and passes the information back to Node B via same channel. And this is the main reason why it is asked to enable SMB protocol on the CSV network.

                                                                  FIG 2

Cluster disk manger [DCM] is responsible for managing the CSV resources and manages the read write policy set on non coordinator nodes for access to CSV disk resources. You can look at cluster.log below and see that [DCM] is responsible for starting csvfilter.sys and creating CSV disk resources.

From cluster.log

01255 00000724.00000388::2009/10/08-18:01:35.592 INFO [DCM] Cluster Shared Volume Root is C:\ClusterStorage
01257 00000724.00000388::2009/10/08-18:01:35.607 INFO [DCM] service/driver CSVFilter started
01258 00000724.00000388::2009/10/08-18:01:35.607 INFO [DCM] short name is C:\CLUSTE~1
01259 00000724.00000388::2009/10/08-18:01:35.607 INFO [DCM] Filter.CfsSetRootFolder (P.id=1828, RootFolder=\ClusterStorage\)
01260 00000724.00000388::2009/10/08-18:01:35.607 INFO [DCM] SetRoot message sent
01261 00000724.00000388::2009/10/08-18:01:35.607 INFO [DCM] Pnp CfsFilter Launching Filter Listener
01269 00000724.00000388::2009/10/08-18:01:35.607 INFO [DCM] db.CreateDcmDisk 'SR' 8e62ea00-9763-4c21-86d1-4a05708be24a-----SR is name of my CSV disk resource
02000 00000724.00000928::2009/10/08-18:01:41.957 INFO [DCM] FsFilterCanUseDirectIO is called for file:///?\Volume{f98a57c7-9ec6-11de-ad77-806e6f6e6963}\
02001 00000724.00000928::2009/10/08-18:01:41.957 INFO [DCM] PostOnline. CanUseDirectIO for Volume1 => true
02008 00000724.00000928::2009/10/08-18:01:41.957 INFO [DCM] ClearVolumeStates: resource 'SR' states
02011 00000724.00000928::2009/10/08-18:01:41.957 INFO [DCM] Reservation.SetMembership(SR,(1 2))
02019 00000724.000008b4::2009/10/08-18:01:41.972 INFO [DCM] volume 'Volume1' is already paused
02020 00000724.000008b4::2009/10/08-18:01:41.972 INFO [DCM] CreateLink C:\ClusterStorage\Volume1 => \\?\Volume{f98a57c7-9ec6-11de-ad77-806e6f6e6963}\

The interesting part is that when a CSV resource is created it is put in its own group which has a unique GUID instead of name. when you run command cluster.exe group command these CSV GUID based group will not be displayed and the reason is Microsoft does not want users to mess with these. Also there are lot of limitations with these groups like you cannot add any resources in these and many more. However running a “cluster.exe res” will show you CSV group’s GUID name.

 
Now as we know that if you are accessing CSV disk resource in a “Redirected access” mode you are bound to get a performance impact as all the read/write and metadata IO is flowing over the network from all non coordinator nodes instead of direct IO to storage object. You can calculate the performance impact by capturing a baseline perfmon during direct IO and redirected IO.

 

In Redirected IO, we leverage SMB mini director and Csvfilter.sys and send all the read/write IO along with NTFS metadata over on network instead of storage path. CSV helps in increased fault tolerance as even if storage path of lun fails from a particular node, the Node will keep accessing the Lun via coordinator node and re direct all IO on network as seen above [though with performance constraints] . We will see more details in next part of this series on cluster shared volumes. We will also see what are options and best practices regarding backup of Vhd files on cluster shared volumes. Hope you find this information interesting and liked today's blog. Thanks for your time and good bye till next blog.

Manage and secure PCs anywhere with Microsoft's cloud based Intune

Microsoft has released another cloud based client machines management tool which can be integrated with MDOP and can be leverage to manage all your client machines from a IE browser virtually from anywhere. Windows Intune delivers cloud-based management and security capabilities that are administered through a simple Web-based console based on silverlight. This tool can be best used in small business segment where you do not have resources to set up an on premise desktop management solution and want all the features of enterprise solution with much less TCO.

This is what Intune service allows you to do from a web console

You need to install the intune client agent on all the machines which you want to manage. Once that is done after 30 minutes or so the computers will come up in unassigned computers group and from there you can place it in self created relevant group.

You can configure the products for which you need updates along with classification of updates and if you want you can also set a auto approval rule. This otherwise needs to be done by either using winows update service in individual clients or leveraging windows update service server [WSUS] but here we can configure our clients by sitting anywhere, anytime.

you can choose what kind of patches you want to be deployed and you can also configure auto approval rules. intune service provides great alert monitoring capabilities. There are around 949 alerts that you can configure using intune service. If a particular client machine generates an alert administrator can receive an email if configured or else can see alerts in browser itself.

Once you register for intune service beta you get only one admin user email from Microsoft however you can configure multiple administrator accounts to monitor your client machines however I have yet not checked what kind of delegation abilities have been provided.

As mentioned above the product allows you to monitor your patch installations and allows you to grab different reports like Update/software, license purchase and license installed reports.you can configure reporting for a particular computer group or as required.

The Web browser also allows you to creat policies for intune client agent, when to schedule malware scan, what folders to exclude, frequencey to look for new updates, firewall settings etc. you can also add licenses agreements and can manage licensing information from web broswer itself.

In short the first version windows Intune looks promising for management of client machines and a great example of how clouds can help in reducing operation and maintennance costs and simplified way of accessing information can be leveraged to make life of a client PC administrator better. You can MDOP tool with intune service to  manage your clients in a better way. Windows Intune customers have access to download and use advanced PC management tools delivered through the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP) [if you meet the criteria mentioned below]. This set of advanced PC management tools complements the capabilities of the Windows Intune cloud service and includes:

 Microsoft Diagnostics and Recovery Toolset (DaRT)

 Microsoft Advanced Group Policy Management (AGPM)

 Microsoft Application Virtualization (App-V)

 Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualization (MED-V)

 Microsoft System Center Desktop Error Monitoring (DEM)

 Microsoft Asset Inventory Service (AIS) (Note: This functionality is included in the Windows Intune cloud service)

MDOP is available for test and evaluation if you meet one of the following criteria:
You are a Windows Software Assurance (SA) customer. MDOP is available to SA customers through the Microsoft Volume License Service Center. OR You are a Microsoft MSDN or TechNet subscriber.

All that Intune can do for you [check video here]

Hope this was informational and gives you an overview of windows Intune. Thanks and see you again shortly as Microsoft has released system center service manager 2010 which is promising and I will try to cover its features too and how it helps in implementing ITIL/MOF process in your IT management.
 
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Reducing Carbon Foot Print in IT

Carbon is fast becoming a currency that global organizations cannot ignore. With carbon cap-and-trade schemes either being planned or implemented by a growing number of national and regional authorities, the carbon impact of an organization’s operations is becoming a measurable cost. And after the global recession, with the focus still very much on the bottom line, carbon impact management is closer than ever to becoming a universal boardroom issue. But who, within an organization, is responsible for mitigating the carbon cost? Certainly, this question does not yet have a straightforward answer. But one thing is clear – however organizations choose to deal with the carbon question, CIOs are bound to be involved. This is because – even if they are not given primary responsibility for managing organizational carbon impact – CIOs will need to ensure carbon reporting systems remain up to date with legislative requirements. On top of that, there is a growing realization that ICT itself has a significant role to play in carbon impact management. The European Commission recently announced1 the information and communication technologies (ICT) sector should lead the transition to an energy efficient economy. It called for Europe’s ICT sector to:

• Agree on common energy consumption measures
• Overtake the EU’s 2020 targets by 2015
• Make innovative use of ICT to make Europe a low-carbon economy

The EC said replacing 20 per cent of European business trips by video conferencing could save more than 22 million tons of CO2 per year. It also said that broadband facilitating increased use of online public services could save two per cent of total worldwide energy use by 2020. It is clear that CIOs need at least to know all the facts, if they are to make an informed decision about the role they will play. So where should they begin?

Carbon Emission and the Bottom line:-
The poster child in the war against carbon emissions has been ‘green’ energy. But while the likes of hydropower, biomass, wind and solar energy may have a knack of exciting the headline writers, none have yet become affordable mainstream technologies. And while the race to find ways to replace our reliance on ‘dirty’ fuels needs to go on, the place to look for short-term emission cuts is in energy efficiency. Unglamorous it may be, but 40 per cent of the carbon reduction to be achieved by 2020 and beyond needs to come from precisely this source2. And central to the story of how business will meet those targets is IT. When asked to provide an example of environmental irresponsibility, the airline industry is never far from people’s lips. Yet global CO2 emissions from IT are roughly on a par with those pumped into the atmosphere by planes. What’s more, the opportunities to use technology to cut emissions are vast. A recent report notes that IT could contribute as much as 15 per cent of global emissions reductions by 20203. Of course, the idea of cutting the energy consumption associated with IT is not new. It’s a target that has featured in the CSR programs of big business for some time. What is new however is the growing realization that an energy efficient approach to IT is far more than a PR tool. Instead it is a bottom-line issue. It doesn’t just look good on the corporate website, it can help save serious sums of money. Consider the 15 per cent figure mentioned above. That equates to €600 billion in cost savings.

After Copenhagen:-
When world leaders met to discuss climate change at the Copenhagen Summit, carbon reduction was one of the topics under discussion. It played a central role in the Copenhagen Accord, which was the key output from the summit (for more details, see Reference Section “Copenhagen: implications for global business”). As part of the Accord, countries were invited to submit their own carbon reduction targets by the end of January 2010. Fifty five did so. They include the US, all EU countries and China, as well as major emerging economies such as Brazil, Indonesia and India. Between them these nations emit 78 per cent of the world’s greenhouse gases. So although there were notable absentees – Brazil was the only South American nation to volunteer a pledge, and just six out of 55 African countries did so – and although the combined country targets are insufficient to cap the temperature rise at the desired two degrees, this was still an important step on the path towards ultimately achieving a legally-binding global agreement. (Though just when such a step will be taken is another matter.) Crucially, the Accord also provides for scrutiny to monitor whether or not countries meet their emissions reductions targets – a key point of difference between developing and developed countries throughout the negotiations. Unsurprisingly this was an issue that the US was particularly keen on in relation to China. As The Economist puts it: “Unless China can be shown to live up to its promises, it will be very difficult to get a climate bill through America’s Senate.”

Local Action – A Snapshot of Carbon reduction activity around the globe:-

Companies will be required to measure all electricity, gas, and oil use (excluding transport and travel). They will then purchase allowances equal to their annual emissions. Within that overall limit, individual organizations can decide on the most cost-effective way to reduce their emissions. Just like most cap-and-trade schemes they will then have the ability to buy extra allowances or invest in ways to cut the number of allowances they need to buy.
A league table is then created, with credits being handed out based on that year’s performance. An organization at the top of the table will receive repayments totaling more than has been paid for the allowances in the first place, while those at the bottom will receive repayments that are less than the amount paid out. In other words, organizations in the bottom half will lose money. Analysis Mason estimates that for the biggest companies, being ranked at the bottom of the table could amount to a financial penalty of over £120,0007.

How IT can cut Enterprise Cost:-
Several technologies are leading the way in helping businesses save hundreds of millions of pounds in the process of cutting their emissions.

Green data centers
One of the most exciting is data centre virtualization, a technology that slashes the number of servers required to run your organization. In the case of BT, data centres used to account for a significant chunk of the company’s carbon emissions. However the average server is utilised at a tiny percentage of its overall capacity. By ‘virtualising’ these servers, or by asking each server to carry out an increased number of tasks at the same time, utilization shoots up, and this means the number of servers needed slumps. In one of BT’s data centers, the number dropped from 1,500 to around 100, saving £600,000. Large numbers of servers create lots of heat which, in turn, means the need for power-hungry air conditioning systems. BT has redesigned its data centers to allow fresh air to cool servers. Air conditioning is only used on the rare occasions when the temperature reaches 28°C or above.

Flexible working and home working
Flexible working and home working are more familiar approaches to cutting power use(and improving productivity) yet many organizations still make little use of them. At a time when there’s an ongoing pressure to find cost savings, there’s a strong argument to take a fresh look at the efficient use and potential rationalisation of building space. BT’s own results make a persuasive case. By enabling over 13,700 employees to become home workers the company saves €750 million a year in property management costs.

Conferencing and collaboration tools
Using conference calls to replace face to face meetings has had similarly dramatic effects within BT, saving the company an estimated £183 million in 2008 and saving over 50,000 tonnes of CO2.
Collaboration technologies have the same effect, allowing people to work together without the need to travel to the same location.

Tips to Decarbonate IT:-
CIOs are at the heart of the emissions reduction story. Information technology is not just a huge energy consumer but can also play a role in reducing energy use and cutting costs in other areas of the organisation. But what are the first steps CIOs can take today to ensure they are prepared to lead the way in cutting their carbon impact, as soon as it becomes a bottom-line issue within their organization?

1. Build environmental responsibility into your distributed organization
As organizations have globalised in recent decades, they have had to face the challenge of maintaining a common corporate culture, irrespective of geography. They now face the same challenge in their attempts to engender a sense of carbon impact responsibility across the business. Concerted and consistent education, support and encouragement are needed to ensure people are aware of what is expected of them, and that they actually exhibit the desired behavior. But this message needs to come from the top down – the CIO needs to lead the way.

2. Ensure the right systems and processes are in place
A group-wide function should be put in place to capture, manage and report all the data related to IT use in the business. Work with facilities management, environmental management and finance, because they will each potentially be affected by legislation as it is brought in around the world. With more countries looking to enshrine environmental commitments in law, there is an increasing need to display accountability at the highest level of the organization. Simply storing information on a spreadsheet will no longer suffice.

3. Redefine the workplace
The vast majority of action on climate change so far has focused on energy use. Surprisingly there has been very little emphasis on travel, whether between business locations, or from home to the traditional workplace. In the UK, for example, approximately 25% of all emissions are travel-related. Promoting technologies that can replace the need for travel (while also saving huge sums of money), by enabling people to meet virtually or work nomadically, is something that CIOs can be doing at board level.

Appendix:-
Copenhagen: implications for global businesses
“It’s very disappointing, I would say, but it is not a failure.” So said Sergio Serra, Brazil’s Climate Change Ambassador at the conclusion of the Copenhagen Summit. This was a view echoed by many, from fellow politicians, to NGOs, to the legion of green pundits in the world’s media. After the summit, there was a feeling that at least a global consensus on climate change was reached. The Copenhagen Accord gives international backing for an immediate global move towards action on climate change. In some ways this is a bigger achievement than the binding commitments that resulted from Kyoto 17 years earlier when the deal only affected developed countries. So what exactly did they agree to? There were three key components:
1. Backing for an overall limit on global warming of two degrees;
2. Agreement that all countries need to take action on climate change;
3. The provision of $30 billion of immediate short-term funding from developed countries over the next three years to kick start emission reduction measures and help the poorest countries adapt to the impacts of climate change; as well as a commitment by developed countries to provide long-term
financing of $100 billion a year by 2020.

Illustration: Comparison of emissions for a typical 200-server Windows network

This illustrative comparison shows the major impact virtualization and data centre energy efficiency can make to CO2 emissions.
1. Impact of virtualization
• Non virtualised: 130KW (~610 tons CO2)
• Virtualised: 24-50KW (~112 – 130 tons CO2)
• Virtualization can reduce power consumption by between 66 per cent and 82 per cent.
(Assumption: Average data centre Power Usage Efficiency* of 2.4)
2. Impact of data centre efficiency
• The difference in energy consumption between an inefficient data centre and an efficient one can be as much as 50 per cent. (Assumption: PUE range from 3.2 to 1.6)
3. Combined impact:
Best and worst-case CO2 emission scenarios


• Potential energy saving/CO2 saving ~91 per cent
* Note: PUE is the industry standard energy efficiency measure for data centers.

References:-
1. www.smart2020.org
2. Analysys Mason’s Carbon Reduction Commitment Brochure
(http://www.analysysmason.com/PageFiles/13899/Carbon_Reduction_Commitment_Brochure.pdf)
3. www.computerweekly.com
4. EU Press Release

MINAL CHINCHKAR

Cloud based Fix it center for automated troubleshooting

Microsoft has just released Fix it center online beta and it is based on the automated troubleshooter feature which we saw inbuilt in windows 7. However as this is more of cloud based fix it center, it supports various operating system versions given below. Though it is a great way of managing all your PC from one location with an automated repair functionality of known issues, however if right now there is no troubleshooter for your problem, you will be provided various other related articles and community groups too. you also have an option of raising a support request from the same online portal if nothing mentioned above helped you. I think this tool is very good for individual customers and small business customers.


• Windows XP SP3

• Windows XP Pro (64-bit) SP2

• Windows Vista

• Windows 7

• Windows Server 2003 SP2

• Windows Server 2008

• Windows Server 2008 R2

You can use any computer with Internet connection to get started with Fix it Center. Simply download the Fix it Center client and follow the on-screen instructions to complete the setup. You can install Fix it Center client on as many PCs you like. It is recommend to sign up for Fix it Center Online during setup so you can manage all your computers from a single location on the Internet yet can view solutions specific for each PC. With automated troubleshooters, Fix it Center helps solve issues with your PC, even if you're not sure what the exact problem is. Fix It Center scans your device to diagnose and repair problems, then gives you the option to "Find and fix" or to "Find and report. With a single view of all your devices, it’s easy to manage multiple devices from one view. You can even manage them remotely.

I downloaded the fix it agent and ran on my PC and as you see below its running an
inventory for my PC

 
It asks me to create an online account and i can use my existing live/hotmail id.
 

 

 
 

 

I see some automated troubleshooters on the screen and the remaining are on the bottom right corner where it says " having a different problem"
 

 
I can manage multiple PC's from same console and also see the diagnostic history on all PC's. I can find more solutions from the Tab and if i need to raise a support request to microsoft, i can do it from here and can also see the old support requests.
 

 
Though i see this tool as a great way of automating troubleshooting and managing small environments, I dont think i will ever run this on my servers as of now. Hope you like this new tool as it automates troubleshooting and make life easier for an end individual user or a small business user.
 
GAURAV ANAND