I am sure everybody has faced the challenge with patching clusters. In Windows Server 2012 we have the feature Cluster-Aware Updating to help us with applying software updates. Unfortunately if you use SCCM for patching you will probably continue using it even for 2012 clusters because you’ve already have some process in place and this new feature is no use, at least at first look. When you want to consolidate the work of two or more tools SC 2012 Orchestrator comes to the rescue. That is what Neil Peterson from MSFT have done and provided Cluster patching runbooks that leverage Windows Server 2012 Cluster and System Center 2012 Components. I haven’t tested them but feel free to test them and drop some comment here or in this page where you can download them..
Category: Windows 8/Server 2012
Disaster Recovery Solution with Orchestrator
Windows Server 2012 has out of the box a disaster recovery solution for virtual machines named Hyper-V Replica. Unfortunately this solution is not automated but luckily you can automate this solution whatever you like with System Center 2012 Orchestrator. Charles Joy from MSFT even offers free runbooks to the community to make that disaster recovery automated. He made two scenarios – one without using the other System Center components and other where he uses SCSM to initiate the failover. Actually the solution is documented with documents and video. You can directly implement the runbooks in your environment or you can change them to fit your needs. It is up to you to make the logic. The solution is pretty fast and most important free if you have Windows Server 2012 and Orchestrator 2012. I’ve seen a solutions for Disaster Recovery that cost a significant amount of money and in the end they are hard to configure, 1 of 3 cases failed during failover and have certain limitations. So I suggest grab this solution from here and make your Disaster Recovery.
Dynamic Memory for Linux Virtual Machines in Hyper-V
There is a rumor that Microsoft is working on dynamic memory for Linux virtual machines with some solid proofs. Last night there was MVA Jump Start “Introduction to Hyper-V” and as always there was an open Q&A section where you can ask a question and experts and MVPs answer. During the whole session I’ve asked one question until I’ve received an answer from MVP Cédric Bravo:
So to my interpretation we can expect dynamic memory for Linux virtual machines in the coming several months.
Documentation: Windows PowerShell Language Specification Version 3.0
Specification for PowerShell 3.0 is available for download in a form of docx file.
New MP: System Center 2012 Monitoring Pack for Windows Server Backup
There is a new management pack on the horizon. For those who use Windows Server Backup they can now monitor it with SCOM 2012 or SCOM 2007 R2. Unfortunately it only supports Backup feature on Windows Server 2012. The documentation with the MP scattered and doesn’t offer much information. In fact Windows Server 2012 in the documentation is mentioned with its codename Windows Server 8. Also I do not have any idea why SCCM 2012 is also mentioned as required software. Anyway the MP just monitor several events in the event log:
- Backup cancelled
- Backup failed
- Backup failed due to snapshot
- Backup partially succeeded
- Backup succeeded with skipped files
- Recovery failed
- Recovery succeeded with warnings
The MP and the two page guide you can download from here.
Cloud Administrator in Azure World 