Tag: windows server 2012

Windows Server 2012 R2 and System Center 2012 R2 Announced

Today at TechEd North America Microsoft announced Windows Server 2012 R2 and System Center 2012 R2. The key thing is that these two product will now have the same release schedule from which we can all benefit. Some of the new features for these two products were announced but I bet there are still to come more. Here are some of the features:

  • 3 site Hyper-V Replica Replication
  • Snapshots, backup, Dynamic Memory and dynamic disks for Linux Machines
  • Online shrink and expand of VHD/X disks
  • Consistent distribution support for Linux machines by System Center
  • Storage Spaces now has Storage Tiers feature
  • Deduplication can be used for VDI scenarios
  • QoS for virtual disks – Min and Max IOPS
  • improving IPAM for virtualized datacenters
  • Virtual RSS (vRSS) that makes it easier to virtualize network-intensive physical server workloads
  • NIC teaming with dynamic teaming capabilities that distribute load more intelligently than before
  • write-back cache feature  for Storage Spaces
  • Shared VDHX for Virtual Machines which means easy guest clustering
  • Generation 2 VM – UEFI-based
  • enhanced VM interaction with full Remote Desktop capabilities
  • Remote Access via VMBus
  • Export virtual machine while running
  • VMM can create File Server Cluster
  • File clusters can now leverage Pools in VMM. VMM can alert for % of over provisioning.
  • File shares have classifications
  • The new version of Orchestrator is entirely based on PowerShell.
  • Remote Live Monitoring, which lets you capture network traffic to a specific VM for analysis from outside the VM
  • VMs now allows you to choose the replication interval, from 30 seconds up to 15 minute
  • NVGRE VPN Gateway as virtual machine – multi tenant, multi site
  • Service template in VMM for NVGRE VPN Gateway based on Windows Server 2012 R2
  • SCSM SSP now on SharePoint 2013 – not certain
  • Live Migration over RDMA
  • Live migration compression
    There will be even more to come.

Microsoft Virtual Academy: Migration to Windows Server 2012

If you are in the path to Windows Server 2012 migration MVA just published videos for you. The course is still not available on MVA site but you can watch the videos:

New MP: System Center Management Pack for Windows Server 2012 DHCP

Microsoft released another new MP as they promised. You can grab the new Windows Server DHCP 2012 MP from here. This MP introduces the following new features:

  • All workflows are implemented using PowerShell to improve overall functionality for this Management Pack.
  • Failover Relationships are now a supported configuration that is being discovered and monitored by the new 2012 Management Pack.
  • Discovery and Monitoring of a DHCP Cluster installation.
  • Scopes, super scopes utilization is being monitored based on events that provide 80% and 100% usage.
  • Utilization of scopes based on policies, client packet drop and residual IP addresses range monitoring.

The MP has very good documentation so read it before importing.

Capacity Planner for Hyper-V Replica

Microsoft has released a tool that will help you plan your capacity for Hyper-V Replica. The tool and the documentation for it you can find here.

Beta versions of the Windows Server 2012 Management Packs are now available for download

Another good news. Beta version of the Management packs for Windows Server 2012 are out for testing. It seems Microsoft will start to deliver Management Packs with the release of every new product. Read full article here:

http://blogs.technet.com/b/momteam/archive/2012/04/19/beta-versions-of-the-windows-server-2012-management-packs-are-now-available-for-download.aspx