IT Camp 2011

Amigos de Bogotá los invito a ser parte del IT Camp 2011, hoy los estaré acompañando con el track de nube privada | Se pueden registrar aquí: http://www.microsoft.com/colombia/activa/itcamp/

También pueden iniciar la Carrera de Nube Privada que he preparado para la academia virtual de Microsoft aquí: http://www.microsoftvirtualacademy.com/tracks/nube-privada

Cloud Computing: The Power of System Center in the Cloud

Windows Server 2008 R2 and System Center can accelerate your adoption of an IT-as-a-service model, which enables greater business agility, scalability and flexibility.

By now, most of us are familiar with, or quickly learning, the basic tenants of cloud computing. In short, there’s a great deal of efficiency to be gained – in costs, resource utilization, quality of service delivery, and more – by leveraging the scalability and elasticity of shared and virtual computing. The ability to purchase computing resources as needed, which can be expanded or contracted to meet a changing business environment, provides a degree of agility that is difficult to achieve with a traditional infrastructure model.

This concept of IT as a Service – encompassing the delivery of software, infrastructure, and platforms – offers organizations greater flexibility in leveraging the power of IT to meet their business needs than has been ever available before. However, often we think of cloud computing solely within the framework of the “public cloud.” That is to say, as a service purchased from a hosting provider, leveraging resources that are shared with other businesses, and accessible via public networks. But the benefits of cloud computing exist on a spectrum, and often they can be realized in a “private cloud” model; delivering the same levels of scalability and elasticity, along with usage-based cost structures that come with public cloud computing, but leveraging resources completely dedicated to the needs of your own organization.

In this article, we’ll talk about Microsoft solutions, powered by Windows Server 2008 R2 and System Center, that can help you simplify and accelerate your adoption of private cloud computing, and in doing so, realize the benefits of increased performance, improved reliability, enhanced business agility and cost efficiency that the cloud has to offer.

Infrastructure Foundations of a Private Cloud Solution

Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 with Hyper-V

The host servers are one of the critical components of a dynamic, virtual infrastructure. The host servers, running Windows Server 2008 R2 with Hyper-V technology, provide the foundation for running virtual machine guests and also provide the management interface between the guests and Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager.

By consolidating multiple server roles into virtualized environments running on a single physical machine, you not only make more effective use of your hardware, but you also unlock the potential to realize the benefits of Infrastructure-as-a-Service, scaling your infrastructure quickly, adding virtual resources to take on new workloads or meet increased demand whenever necessary.

We’ll talk more later in this article about the process of migrating your existing infrastructure to a virtualized, private cloud environment. In the meantime, for detailed guidance on how to get started installing and configuring Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V, see the Hyper-V Getting Started Guide.

System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2

The primary tool for managing a virtual private cloud infrastructure will be System Center Virtual Machine Manager (VMM). System Center Virtual Machine Manager can scale across a wide range of virtual environments, ranging from a single server for smaller environments to a fully distributed enterprise environment that manages hundreds of hosts running thousands of virtual machines.

There are some key benefits of managing your virtualized infrastructure with VMM, including:

• Virtualization support for virtual machines running on Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V, Microsoft Virtual Server and VMware ESX
• End-to-end support for consolidating physical servers onto a virtual infrastructure
• Performance and Resource Optimization (PRO) for dynamic and responsive management of virtual infrastructure (requires System Center Operations Manager)
• Intelligent Placement of virtual workloads on the best-suited physical host servers
• A complete library to centrally manage all the building blocks of the virtual datacenter

System Center Virtual Machine Manager provides a critical layer of management and control that is key to realizing the efficiencies of a private cloud model. VMM not only provides a unified view of your entire virtualized infrastructure across multiple host platforms and myriad guest operating systems, but it also delivers a powerful toolset to facilitate onboarding new workloads quickly and easily. For example, the P2V conversion wizard included in VMM simplifies the process of converting existing physical workloads to virtualized machines. And in conjunction with System Center Operations Manager, the Performance and Resource Optimization feature provides dynamic reallocation of virtualized workloads to ensure that you’re getting the most out of your physical hardware resources.

For detailed guidance on how to get started installing and configuring System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2, see the Virtual Machine Manager Deployment Guide.

SCVMM 2008 R2 Self-Service Portal 2.0

Self-service functionality is a core component of delivering IT as a service. Using the Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager Self-Service Portal 2.0, enterprise datacenters can provide Infrastructure-as-a-Service to business units within their own organization. The self-service portal provides a way for groups within a business to manage their own IT needs while the centralized infrastructure organization manages a pool of physical resources (servers, networks, and related hardware).

The self-service portal has four components:

• VMSSP website. A Web-based component that provides a user interface to the self-service portal. Through the VMMSSP website, infrastructure administrators can perform various tasks such as pooling infrastructure assets in the self-service portal, extending virtual machine actions, creating business unit and infrastructure requests, validating and approving requests, and provisioning virtual machines (using the self-service virtual machine provisioning feature). Administrators can also use the VMMSSP website to view information related to these tasks.
• VMMSSP database. A SQL Server database that stores information about configured assets, information related to business units and requests, and information about what has been provisioned to various business units. The database also stores the XML that encodes default and customized virtual machine actions and other information related to the configuration of the self-service portal.
• VMMSSP server. A Windows service that runs default and customized virtual machine actions that the user requests through the VMMSSP website.
• Reporting Dashboard. A reporting service built on Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 SP2. The Dashboard provides out-of-the-box reports and the ability to quickly produce custom reports.

Business units that enroll in the self-service portal system can use the portal to address a number of key functions. For example, through the use of standardized forms, business units can request new infrastructures or changes to existing infrastructure components. Each business unit can submit requests to the infrastructure administrator. The standardized forms ensure that the infrastructure administrator has all of the information needed to fulfill the requests without needing to repeatedly contact the business unit for details.

Individual business units can also be empowered to create and manage their own virtual machines. The VMMSSP website includes self-service provisioning forms that business units can use to create virtual machines. When a business unit submits a request to create virtual machines, the self-service portal starts an automated provisioning process creates the virtual machines more quickly and efficiently than a manual process. Each business unit can also designate its own administrators, advanced operators, and users, freeing IT resources for other tasks.

Infrastructure administrators can realize a number of benefits from the self-service portal as well. By simplifying the process of enrolling business units and defining their needs up front, on-boarding new workloads is no longer a manual task. The self-service portal collects information about a business unit and about the resources they want to set up. The process of validating and provisioning resources for business units is simplified as well. Datacenter administrators can use the self-service portal to assign resources based on business unit requests. Finally, changes to resources follow a request-and-approve life cycle, and the requests remain on record in the database, dramatically reducing the administrative burden of change control and management.

Migrating to the Cloud

Once the key components of your private cloud infrastructure are in place, you can begin evaluating existing workloads and migrating them to your virtualized environment. When identifying the best candidates for P2V conversion, consider converting these types of computers, in order of preference:

1. Non business-critical underutilized computers. By starting with the least utilized computers that are not business critical, you can learn the P2V process with relatively low risk. Web servers may make good candidates.
2. Computers with outdated or unsupported hardware that needs to be replaced.
3. Computers with low utilization that are hosting less critical in-house applications.
4. Computers with higher utilization that are hosting less critical applications.
5. The remaining underutilized computers. 
6. In general, business-critical applications, such as e-mail servers and databases that are highly utilized, should only be virtualized to the Hyper-V platform in the Windows Server 2008 (64-bit) operating system.

As mentioned earlier, VMM simplifies Physical-to-Virtual (P2V) migrations by providing a task-based wizard to automate much of the conversion process. Additionally, since the P2V process is completely scriptable, you can initiate large-scale P2V conversions through the Windows PowerShell command line. See Converting Physical Computers to Virtual Machines in VMM for a complete walkthrough and step-by-step instructions.

Beyond the Foundations

Building your private cloud infrastructure extends beyond the foundations of a virtualized, self-service infrastructure. Though the ability to quickly scale application and service delivery through a flexible Infrastructure-as-a-Service model is a core component, delivering an end-to-end datacenter and private cloud solution goes much further. The ability to monitor, manage, and maintain the environment is critical to the effective delivery of IT services. Additionally, ensuring compliance and good governance, streamlining service delivery based on best practices, and achieving even greater efficiency through process automation are all key pillars of a cloud computing environment. Fortunately, System Center continues to deliver solutions to help you get there.

System Center Operations Manager delivers 360-degree operational insight across your entire infrastructure, whether it’s deployed on physical datacenter, private cloud, or public cloud resources. Providing seamless integration with Windows Server 2008 and Virtual Machine Manager, System Center Operations Manager helps you monitor the state and health of your computing resources regardless of how and where they’re deployed, helping you reduce the cost of IT management by identifying and potentially remediating issues before they interfere with service delivery.

Within a private cloud architecture, System Center Configuration Manger continues to provide the same degree of systems management and administration that IT professionals have come to expect. The ability to assess, deploy, update and configure resources using Configuration Manager persists as workloads are migrated into a cloud environment, giving administrators the necessary assurance that their resources are well maintained and protected.

System Center Service Manager provides built-in processes based on industry best practices for incident and problem resolution, change control, and asset lifecycle management. Service Manager provides integration across the entire System Center suite, including Operations Manager and Configuration Manager, to collect information and knowledge about infrastructure operations, and help administrators continuously meet and adapt to changing service level requirements. Together with Opalis, a new addition to the System Center suite, administrators can also automate IT processes for incident response, change and compliance, and service-lifecycle management.

Expanding into the Public Cloud

It’s entirely possible that even after building out your own private cloud environment, your business requirements may dictate the need for greater computing capacity than you would want to host or manage entirely on your own. Fortunately, Windows Azure can provide hosted, on-demand computing resources that can be seamlessly integrated with your existing private cloud infrastructure. Business applications can be deployed on the Windows Azure Platform, adding compute and storage resources that scale to meet demand. Using the Windows Azure VM Role, customized virtual machines – just like the ones you’ve built within your private cloud – can even be hosted on Windows Azure resources, providing additional scalability and capacity whenever it’s needed.

All of the solutions we’ve discussed in this article are capable of delivering IT as a Service across private cloud, public cloud and hybrid architectures. For example, the Windows Azure Application Monitoring Management Pack for System Center Operations Manager provides the same operational insight for applications hosted on the Windows Azure platform that administrators have come to expect from on-premises solutions. And System Center Service Manager and Opalis help deliver process automation, compliance, and SLA management with a service-optimized approach that spans your infrastructure.

What we’ve discussed here today is just the tip of the iceberg. We’ve shown how adopting an IT-as-a-Service model enables greater business agility, scalability and flexibility than has ever been possible before. For more information on how to get started, be sure to visitmicrosoft.com/privatecloud

Autor: Joshua Hoffman

Data Center Specialists Expand IT Automation Possibilities with Portal Solution

WinWorkers helps businesses streamline data centers with automation and virtualization. WinWorkers specializes in the Microsoft System Center family of system management products, and it became an early adopter of the Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager Self-Service Portal V2.0. The company is using the portal to help customers simplify data centers and move toward a service-oriented IT delivery model.

Business NeedsWinWorkers, based in Zurich, Switzerland, is an IT consulting and architecture company that specializes in data center automation and system integration. WinWorkers is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner and a member of the Microsoft System Center Alliance, and it builds custom–made IT solutions for enterprise businesses with up to 100,000 users. The company has 25 full-time employees and a worldwide team of consultants.

Beginning in 2007, WinWorkers made the decision to focus exclusively on Microsoft products for data center automation and virtualization, including the Microsoft System Center family of system management products and the Windows Server 2008 R2 operating system with the Hyper-V virtualization technology. “Microsoft’s long-term strategy for data center management and virtualization is much more forward-thinking than other vendors, from both a financial and a technical perspective,” says Roland Huebinger, Chief Executive Officer at WinWorkers. “So we got rid of other management software, and we made the decision to use Hyper-V instead of VMWare for virtualization.”

Corporate IT groups often face pressure to increase system performance while simultaneously reducing costs. As a result, some IT departments are moving to a cloud computing paradigm, where management automation tools and virtualization solutions are used to efficiently deliver IT resources on demand as services. This could take the form of a public cloud that is externally accessible, or a private cloud serving only internal users.

“Moving to a private cloud architecture or service-oriented IT model can be a great solution for companies that want to manage their IT resources more efficiently,” says Huebinger. “We had one customer with 2,000 servers and 20,000 clients and they are now managing the entire infrastructure with the equivalent of 1.5 full-time employees. We need the latest and best tools to get results like that.”

SolutionTo expand its ability to help customers move to a more dynamic data center architecture, WinWorkers enrolled in the technology adoption program for the Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager Self-Service Portal V2.0. This free* solution from Microsoft includes a set of web portals, a data store, and a lightweight provisioning engine, along with documentation and infrastructure guidance to help IT departments dynamically pool, allocate, and manage virtualized resources.

Although WinWorkers has created its own library of custom scripts for System Center products, engineers welcomed the portal tools. “When we’ve built tools in the past, it was because there was no available tool for a specific need,” says Sebastian Lentz, Head of Communication at WinWorkers. “But supplementing or replacing them with tools from Microsoft just increases the standardization of our customers’ products. And our engineers tell us they really like working with the portal.”

When engineers began using the portal, the user interface capabilities stood out as a key feature. “It provides a standard interface that we can fully automate with Windows PowerShell,” says Huebinger. “So we can give the users a simple dashboard, which makes it easy for administrators to allocate data center resources in response to user demand.”

Virtualization is a key to data center automation, and WinWorkers is using the System Center Virtual Machine Manager Self-Service Portal to extend the virtualization management capabilities of Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager. “The portal solution makes it possible to deal with the more complex issues of data center virtualization,” says Huebinger. “We expect that more and more data centers will move from VMWare to Hyper-V to take advantage of a strong virtualization platform, combined with the strengths of the enterprise-proven System Center suite for configuration and operations management.”

BenefitsWinWorkers engineers are experts in modern data center architecture, and with the System Center Virtual Machine Manager Self-Service Portal V2.0 they have enhanced that expertise to better help customers reduce management overhead, strengthen product integration, and move toward an efficient, service-oriented IT delivery model.

Streamlined Data Center ManagementBy simplifying virtualization management and resource allocation with the portal, WinWorkers will make it possible for its customers to build data centers that can be run very efficiently. “Cost is always a pressure in IT,” says Lentz. “Now you don’t have to be a high-level engineer to provision a virtual machine. “

WinWorkers will integrate the portal into its next big data center project and expects it to greatly expedite the process. “We showed the customer what we can do with the System Center suite and the portal, and they loved the easy management and fast rollout it provides,” says Huebinger. “We expect to complete the project in three months—before the portal it would have taken eight months.”

Tighter Product IntegrationBecause the portal comes from Microsoft, WinWorkers believes that it will help to improve the reliability of the company’s Microsoft-based data center automation. “I can tell people that with the portal and the System Center suite, they don’t need any third-party solutions,” says Huebinger. “They can replace interim fixes or workarounds with something that works much better. It gives customers more confidence in their products.”

Service-Oriented IT DeliveryAs part of the move toward more automated data centers and cloud architectures, businesses are starting to view IT resources—not just software, but virtual servers and storage as well—as services to be delivered, and WinWorkers sees the System Center Virtual Machine Manager Self-Service Portal V2.0 as a catalyst toward that new approach. “IT is becoming more of a commodity business,” says Huebinger. “And data centers are changing to reflect that. The Self-Service Portal will make it much easier for businesses to build a private cloud and start delivering infrastructure as a service.”

Configuración de rendimiento y optimización de recursos

Excerpted from Course 10215A: Implementing and Managing Microsoft Server Virtualization
This lesson is part of a five-day, 300-level course focusing on deploying and managing a server virtualization environment for system administrators with significant experience managing Windows Server 2008 or Windows Server 2008 R2. This course is offered exclusively by  Microsoft Learning Partners and delivered by Microsoft Certified Trainers. See additional course requirements, the complete syllabus, and upcoming course dates and locations here.

This lesson describes how to implement performance and resource optimization in System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2.

What is Performance and Resource Optimization (PRO)?

 PRO helps ensure that virtual machine hosts and virtual machines are operating in the most efficient possible manner. PRO generates recommendations for remedial actions based on alerts that Operations Manager generates. You can configure PRO to implement the preconfigured corrective actions automatically.
To allow Operations Manager to collect data for PRO, you must install PRO-enabled management packs on the Operations Manager server, and install an Operations Manager agent on each virtualization host (except VMware ESX servers), and on each virtual machine.
As Operations Manager collects data about the virtual environment, it can generate PRO tips, which display in the VMM Administrator Console. The PRO tips can recommend placement, migration, or reconfiguration of virtual machines to optimize the virtual environment.
PRO-enabled management packs define the following types of PRO tips:

• PRO tips for hosts: PRO tips for hosts can recommend actions, such as migration of a virtual machine so that you return a host to a healthy state based on resource usage or other performance and health measures on the host.
• PRO tips for virtual machines: PRO tips for virtual machines recommend actions, such as a configuration update, to return a virtual machine to a healthy state based on resource usage or other performance and health measures in virtual machines.

You can view the details for any PRO-initiated job in the Jobs view of the VMM Administrator Console. A PRO tab in the job details for each PRO-initiated job displays the status of each job associated with the PRO tip.
PRO in VMM 2008 R2 has the following capabilities:

• Intelligent Placement: PRO provides recommendations for optimal placement of multimachine configurations across multiple hosts.
• Clustering: PRO is cluster-aware and you can use it to help ensure clustered host optimization.
• Health based decisions: PRO leverages Operations Manager health monitoring to determine when you need to take corrective steps.
• Virtual Machine sizing: PRO can make recommendations regarding configuration alterations for virtual machines to improve performance.
• Automatic remediation: You can configure PRO to implement the recommended steps automatically.

Question: In what ways is PRO different than VMM reporting?
Answer: PRO provides interactive information about performance or configuration issues on the Hyper-V hosts or virtual machines, along with recommendations for addressing the issues. VMM reports present performance or utilization statistics, but the reports do not include any recommendations or steps that you can take to address issues.

Options for Configuring PRO

 When you implement PRO, you have several options for configuring the feature.

• You can configure the host groups that PRO tips affect. By default, PRO is not enabled on any host group, even after you complete the integration with Operations Manager. You can edit the PRO settings for the entire VMM deployment by enabling the feature on the PRO Settings dialog box. By default, when you do this, all host groups inherit the new configuration. You can modify the properties for each child host group and remove the inheritance of the PRO setting from the parent host group. When you remove the inheritance, you can disable the application of PRO tips for the host group, or you can change the PRO configuration.
• You can choose to implement PRO tips automatically or to review the tips before implementing them manually. By default, when you enable PRO on a host group, PRO tips display in VMM Administrator Console, but are not implemented automatically. If you accept the default configuration, you can review the PRO tips, and then choose whether to implement them. If you choose to have PRO implement the tips, VMM takes the actions specified in the related PRO management pack.
• You can specify the severity level for the PRO tips that VMM displays or implements. By default, when you enable PRO, all warning and critical tips are displayed in the VMM Administrator Console. The warning and critical values are determined by the setting in the PRO management packs. You can modify this setting to display only critical tips. If you configure automatic implementation of PRO tips, you also can configure whether it applies to critical PRO tips only or to warning and critical PRO tips.
• You can exclude specific virtual machines from being affected by host level PRO tip actions. For example, if you have a virtual machine that is running on a host cluster, and it is critical that the host machine always run on a specific host, you can configure the virtual machine settings to exclude it from any PRO tip actions, such as performing a live migration.

 

Lab: Configuring and Validating PRO

Note: To perform this lab with full-hands on access, attend the full course at a Microsoft Learning Partner
After the initial configuration of SQL Server and Operations Manager, you need to complete additional steps to complete the implementation of PRO tips. You need to configure the Action account, configure the root server that VMM will be communicating with, and then configure the PRO settings at the VMM server, host group and individual virtual machine level.
The main tasks for this exercise are:

1. Configure the Action account for Operations Manager.
2. Configure the Operations Manager root management server.
3. Configure PRO for VMM server.
4. Configure PRO for an Individual Host Cluster.
5. Remove a virtual machine from PRO host-level actions.
6. View and implement a PRO tip.
7. Remove the Failover Cluster.

Task 1: Configure the Action account for Operations Manager

1. On NYC-SVR3, in the Operations Manager Console, click Administration.
2. In the Administration pane, under Run As Configuration, click Accounts.
3. Verify that Contoso\Administrator is listed in the Action Account sections.
4. On NYC-VMM, in the VMM Administrator Console, click Administration.
5. Verify that CONTOSO\Administrator is a member of the Administrators user role. The Action account used in Operations Manager must be a member of the Administrator user role in VMM to ensure that you can implement PRO tips.

Task 2: Configure the Operations Manager root management server

1. On NYC-VMM, in VMM Administrator Console, in the Administration pane, click System Center.
2. In the Details pane, double-click Operations Manager Server.
3. Configure the Operations Manager Server as NYC-SVR3.

Task 3: Configure PRO for VMM server

1. In the Administration pane, click General.
2. In the Details pane, double-click PRO Settings.
3. Enable PRO tips, and enable automatic implementation of PRO tips.

Task 4: Configure PRO for an individual host cluster

1. In the left pane, click Hosts.
2. Access the properties for HVCLuster.
3. Remove the inheritance of PRO settings from the parent host group. Enable PRO for the host cluster, but do not implement PRO tips automatically.

Task 5: Remove a virtual machine from PRO host-level actions

1. In the left pane, click Virtual Machines.
2. Access the properties for 10215A-NYC-SVR1.
3. On the Settings tab, select the Exclude virtual machine from PRO host-level actions check box.

Task 6: View and implement a PRO tip

1. On NYC-Host1, open a command prompt, type e:, and then press ENTER.
2. Type CD E:\Program Files\Microsoft Learning\10215A\Labfiles\StressTool\amd64, and then press ENTER.
3. Type StressTool 90, and then press ENTER.
4. On NYC-VMM, in the VMM Administrator Console, wait for the PRO tip to appear.
5. When the PRO tip appears, review the information listed in the tip.
6. Implement the PRO tip.
7. In the Jobs windows, verify that the job to address the PRO tip has been started.
8. Dismiss the PRO tip.
9. On NYC-Host1, stop the StressTool by clicking in the command prompt, and pressing CTRL+C.

Task 7: Remove the failover cluster

1. On NYC-VMM, in the VMM Administrator Console, stop the HA-Test and VMM-HA virtual machines.
2. Right-click HVCluster.contoso.com and click Remove host cluster. Provide the credentials to remove the host cluster.
3. In Failover Cluster Manager, remove all of the highly available virtual machines.
4. Destroy the HVCLuster.contoso.com cluster.
5. Close all open windows.

Results: After this exercise, you will have configured PRO tips in VMM and tested that PRO tips are functioning as expected.

Deliver On-premises Private Cloud Computing Foundation

The Microsoft Server platform, comprised of Windows Server Hyper-V and System Center, combined with the System Center Virtual Machine Manager Self-Service Portal 2.0, helps IT organizations extend their existing investments to deliver on-premises private cloud computing. This increases IT agility enabling faster responses to business requirements through self-service provisioning of IT infrastructure.

The Self-Service Portal, built on top of Windows Server Hyper-V and System Center, is a free, extensible, turnkey solution that empowers datacenters to dynamically pool, allocate, and manage resources to enable on premises private cloud computing. Using this solution, IT organizations create agile, virtualized infrastructures and facilitate business agility, operational efficiencies, and reduced management complexity.

Below are some key capabilities of the self-service portal:

• Automation and guidance, with step-by-step instructions and technical best practices to help assess, plan, and design an on-premises cloud infrastructure.
• Organization and business-unit onboarding, with automated workflows to onboard line-of-business applications to a virtualized, shared resource pool.
• A dynamic provisioning engine that can, in conjunction with System Center and Hyper-V, rapidly provision a virtualized infrastructure.
• End-user self-service capabilities, for requesting infrastructure in a self-service model for their applications and services.

What's in This Solution?

This solution contains a combination of Microsoft products, services, and partner offerings, as summarized below. It can be licensed through the Core Infrastructure Server Suites available through the Enrollment for Core Infrastructure. System Center can also be licensed through the System Center Server Management Suites.