If you have been reading up about the features of Hyper-V 2.0, you probably read about Clustered Shared Volumes or CSVs. Basically, CSVs are the main ingredient to the (not so) secret sauce that makes Live Migration work.

A clustered shared volume can be created from any existing volume in a failover cluster. If you have an existing volume formatted with NTFS, you can mark it as a CSV and it will show up in the Failover Cluster Manager as a CSV. Note that existing data on the NTFS volume is not touched in any way.

On the compatibility side you should know the following:

1. CSVs in Windows Server 2008 R2 only support Hyper-V
2. There are no special hardware requirements and you can use the same technologies as a standard cluster disk: iSCSI, FC, SAS
3. There is no limit on directory structure
4. No agents or other software needs to be installed
5. Not another file system – it is standard NTFS

Note that this is not a clustered file system like VMware VMFS of Sanbolic’s Melio FS. There is no distributed lock manager or anything like that. What CSVs deliver is a distributed access file system.

CSVs provide a single consistent file name space. This means that every node in the cluster has the same path to the volumes. You will see the CSVs under the %windir%\ClusterStorage directory. For example:

• c:\ClusterStorage\Volume1\<root>
• c:\ClusterStorage\Volume2\<root>

The only thing you need to do after adding the CSVs is to put VHDs on the clustered shared volume (using the paths shown above) and create the virtual machine using Hyper-V Manager making sure that you put the configuration files on the CSV as well. You can then use the Failover Cluster Manager console to make the virtual machine highly available just like how you do it now. Basically, the only thing that changes here is the creation of the CSV and making sure that you place your virtual machine on the CSV. All the other steps are exactly the same as how it currently works.

With the current implementation of Hyper-V, you need to put each virtual machine in its own LUN if you want the virtual machines to failover to different hosts or if you want to quick migrate the virtual machines independently from the others. CSVs in Windows Server 2008 R2 remove this limitation. This also results in less wasted storage space and basically a better storage management story.

From an architectural perspective you should know that only one node in the failover cluster still owns the CSV LUN. That node is called the coordinator and it basically manages how the disk access should work. There is one such coordinator for each shared volume. You do not have to worry about selecting a coordinator as that is taken care of automatically. When the coordinator fails, there is no impact on virtual machines that are not running on the coordinator itself.

Microsoft did not provide any clear information about how the access to disk is actually performed. Basically the answer to our questions was that the coordinator decides what the best path to the storage is: direct access or over the network. Yes, you read that right: access to the LUN from one node might be redirected over the network via SMB to another node that writes to the LUN. Again, I have no information about when that exactly happens.

We also learned that the implementation of CSVs is done with a mini file system driver called CSVfilter.sys. Being a new filter driver, there might be some impact on other components such as backup software. Microsoft is working with backup and storage vendors and its own DPM team to clear up these issues. What I can say is that there is a new VSS API call called PrepareVolumeForSnapshotSet and that this needs to be used by VSS Requesters. The node that initiates the VSS backup also needs to become the coordinator node (happens automatically) because it needs to manage exactly what happens with the CSV volumes. The CSV volumes stay online during the backup but there will be no direct I/O until the backup ends. I guess that means that access to the LUN from other nodes will go over the network to the coordinator and from there to the LUN.

What is my take on this? Well, it seems like an overly complex solution to make something like Live Migration and HA work for individual virtual machines on a single bigger LUN. I guess that results from the fact that Microsoft decided to work with the existing NTFS file system instead of creating a dedicated file system optimized for virtual machine storage. On the other hand it does deliver extra features such as SAN I/O redirection over the network when the storage path to the SAN array completely fails.

More information about CSVs can be found in the R2 reviewers guide.

As the name implies, this session presented an overview of all the new features of Windows Server 2008 R2 without going too much in the details.

Server Core

When compared to the full version of Windows Server 2008, Server Core has a 40% reduction in patches. Although the initial release of Server Core works well, the lack of .NET support was kind of an issue. In R2, a subset of .NET is supported. In addition, a subset of ASP.NET is supported as well. PowerShell 2.0 is also supported and a demo showed how to use the new PowerShell graphical editor to issue a remote PowerShell command to a Server Core box.

Virtualization

Again, Live Migration with Hyper-V 2.0 was discussed with the recommendation to trigger Live Migration with SCVMM 2008. They briefly mentioned CSVs (Clustered Shared Volumes) but I will follow another session to get a clearer picture of that technology. Hyper-V will support 32 logical CPUs and SLAT (Second Level Address Translation) that takes advantage of the support in newer CPUs for hardware memory management (Intel EPT, AMD RVI).

They then switched to Terminal Services that is now renamed to Remote Desktop Services although not much more was said. Note that R2 will have support for VDI where the TS Session Broker (now called RDS Session Broker) will be able to direct a user to a session on a desktop instead of a terminal server. You can find some more detailed information here.

Management

At last there will be a remotable Server Manager, although that really should have been a part of the first release. PowerShell 2.0 seems interesting because there will be cmdlets to explicitly manage Windows Server 2008 R2. This is the case for Failover Clustering for example, where the cluster.exe tool will be replaced by PowerShell cmdlets. In R2, cluster.exe will still be available though.

Active Directory

The new Active Directory Admin Center looks promising as does the new recycle bin feature. There is a new domain mode for R2 that will activate this recycle bin feature.

Better together with Windows 7

The two main features here are DirectAccess and BranchCache. DirectAccess provides a way for Windows 7 clients to seamlessly access the corporate network using either SSTP or IPSec.

I already discussed BranchCache here and you can find other information on Kurt Roggen’s blog as well.

Some extra features worth mentioning are enhanced GPOs (more settings) and BitLocker on removable drives.

IIS 7

IIS 7 will have support for ASP.NET on Server Core. From the management point of view, there will be PowerShell cmdlets that run on Server Core as well. As expected, FTP 7 will be included in R2. Now, this is a separate download.

Conclusion

The session provided a basic overview of many of the new features the most notable ones being Hyper-V 2.0 with clustered shared volumes (CSV) and Live Migration!

This was an interesting session that started with the different models that customers are following when it comes to branch offices:

1. Centralized
2. Distributed

With the centralized model, one of the biggest issues is performance across the WAN with high latency and typically still a high price. When customers follow the distributed model, they usually place infrastructure roles (print, DNS, DHCP, domain controllers) and LOB apps in the branch.

Microsoft has a commitment to improve the branch office deployment scenarios and does this on three levels:

1. Improve the protocols
2. Provide different features for servers in a branch (e.g. RODC)
3. WAN optimization

The protocols were already improved in Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 with the new TCP/IP stack and features such as the auto-tuned TCP Receive Window Size. They actually made the protocols aware of the underlying network conditions to adjust the behavior accordingly.

On the application level (and here that means SMB or CIFS) we have SMB 2.0 for a while now. SMB v2.0 performs less roundtrips, puts multiple commands in a single packet and makes parallel requests to improve performance.

Functionality on top of the application level will be improved in Windows 7 with a new mode for Offline Files called “Usually Offline”. In this mode, your offline files are transparently synchronized in the background at fixed intervals. These intervals can be configured by the administrator.

The most interesting feature that was discussed was actually BranchCache. BranchCache is a Windows 7 / Windows Server 2008 R2 feature that caches files that are retrieved over the WAN for speedier retrieval afterwards. BranchCache has two modes:

1. Distributed
2. Hosted Cache

In the distributed mode, clients running Windows 7 work together. When a client gets a file from the main office across the WAN, the client stores this file on its file system and a unique ID is returned. When a second client tries to get the file from the main office, that client gets the unique ID from the server and multicasts that ID on the local subnet to check if other clients have that same file in their cache. If they have, they retrieve the file from a local client.

Note that for this to work, the clients need to be in the same subnet. The clients still have to go across the WAN to issue a request in order to retrieve the unique file ID from the remote server and to make sure that the user retrieving the file is authorized.

With the hosted cache mode, you actually have a server in the branch office that caches the content instead of have the cache distributed among clients in the branch.

Note that BranchCache works with file server and HTTP/HTTPS content.

The session went on with a couple of other new features in Windows Server 2008 R2:

• ReadOnly DFS replicas: to prevent accidental deletes of files and complete directories at a branch
• Server Core: .NET support for Server Core to run applications and things like SCCM distribution points.

To end, they discussed WAN Optimization Controllers from Citrix and Cisco that run Windows Server and also provide things such as DNS, DHCP, RODC, print, etc… This actually makes a hybrid scenario possible where LOB apps are centralized but access is accelerated using these controllers. At the same time, the controllers provide infrastructure services that are still useful in the branch.

It was an interesting session that provided useful information, especially about the new BranchCache feature.

The keynote was presented by Brad Anderson and immediately started with the IT priorities of this day and age such as cloud computing, green IT, business intelligence and compliance. The key point here was that businesses need to drive down costs and expand business capabilities at the same time and that this is something you can do with Microsoft’s solutions. Everything can be turned into an advantage and it is not the first time I hear that you can take advantage of an economic downturn like this.

Then Brad talked about Dynamic IT that makes IT less of a cost center and more of an asset to the business. Microsoft focuses on four areas to make that happen:

1. Unified and virtualized approach
2. Model driven
3. Service enabled (cloud or not)
4. Focused on the user

These things are not new and were also discussed during last year’s keynote.

The focus then shifted to virtualization that you have to see as a strategy and not as a bunch of products. They demoed Hyper-V 2.0 that is a part of Windows Server 2008 R2. Of course, the demo showed the Live Migration feature but also focused on the importance of managing both your physical and virtual infrastructure with SCOM 2007. And of course, SCOM 2007 integrates nicely with System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM 2008) with the PRO tips. Essentially, SCOM delivers these tips to SCVMM where they can be implemented by the administrator or where they can be automatically implemented. This is especially useful when combined with Live Migration to optimize running workloads during business hours based on application knowledge from SCOM.

Microsoft of course uses virtualization from the datacenter to the desktop and with tools such as the acquired technology from Kidaro (now called MED-V) this becomes more and more clear. Brad also talked about the fast adoption of MDOP (Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack) that includes App-V.

Then the presentation went on about datacenters and the fact that Microsoft are building several new and large datacenters with a big focus on green IT. Microsoft needs those datacenters to provide cloud-based services such as those announced last week (Azure) but also offerings such as Exchange Online and SharePoint Online. Brad stressed that they are actually learning from these implementations to improve their management products and that they are moving closer and closer to the Dynamic Datacenter where technologies such as hardware virtualization and software virtualization are combined. In fact, they are working to extend App-V features to server applications to make it possible to assemble a solution by combining operating system images with application images.

Then the focus shifted to Operations Manager 2007 R2 where they will extend management capabilities to Linux and Solaris. They actually make use of things such as OpenPegasus and OpenWSManagement to make this work. A new feature called ProblemPath was demonstrated. ProblemPath actually highlights the path to a problem in Diagram View to clearly show where the problem is situated. The beta of R2 will be available shortly.

The next section dealt with Windows Server 2008 R2 where they focused on the four main areas of improvements:

1. Virtualization: Hyper-V 2.0 with Live Migration, improved Terminal Services and VDI
2. Management: PowerShell 2.0 and a bunch of cmdlets to manage Windows
3. Windows 7 and R2 better together:: DirectAccess, BitLocker To Go and BranchCache
4. Web improvements

They they actually demoed BranchCache where you can actually configure a file server to cache content from a location over the WAN to improve access times. It’s good too see technology like that making its way to Windows as an out of the box solution.

Next, they talked about the next version of SQL 2008 called Kilimanjaro. Interesting in that release are the self-service BI features. They will make it easier for end-users to perform analysis, create reports and share their work with their co-workers. The demo was actually quite interesting and it is something I need to take a better look at in the coming months.

Of course, no keynote these days can be complete without saying something about cloud computing and this one was no different. Microsoft wants to offer choice to the customer when it comes to using their products. A customer can run the products on-premise, partner hosted or Microsoft hosted. In any case, users use the tools they know to work with these services. They then demonstrated Exchange Online by synchronizing Active Directory with the online service, enabling users for an online mailbox and migrating the mailbox from the customer’s server to the Microsoft servers. I already talked about this in a previous post and it is pretty easy to set these things up. Note however that passwords are not synchronized and that for now, there is no free/busy synchronization available.

To summarize it was a decent keynote that mainly put extra emphasis on things we knew already. Microsoft is clearly going forward in the virtualization and management space with a set of products that integrate well and are able to manage the physical and virtual world with the same toolset.