WSSRA : High Availability

Windows Server Failover Cluster 2012 in Depth

Thomas K.H. Bittner — Tue, 24 Jul 2012 07:18:46 GMT

Find here all sessions from Tech-Ed which covers all details about Windows Server Failover Cluster 2012. Every session takes about one hour. But it is worth taking time watching all of the sessions.

NetApp released new SnapManager

Thomas K.H. Bittner — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 11:06:42 GMT

Find new versions with multiple enhancements for download:

SnapManager for SharePoint

SnapManager for SQL

Exchange 2010 Service Pack 2 available

Thomas K.H. Bittner — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 09:44:22 GMT

You can download it from here

http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=28190

Exchange 2010 SP2 is a complete installation software pack, so for new Exchange installations, you can use it to start with from scratch.

Also when you use it for updating your current installations, be aware that you need Schema- and/or Organisaiton Administrator rights, because it contains a Schema update for your Active Directory.

And this Schema update needs to be execute in the domain where the Schema Master Role exist. So run setup /prepareAD not in the domain where you operate your Exchange Servers, it will not work. You need to go to the root domain, if there is the Schema Master or you have to move the Schema Master on to a domain controller in the domain where you operate your Exchange environment.

And remember that you should wait for replication across your AD after you’ve performed the Exchange 2010 SP2 Schema update.

During you’re waiting for replication, you can use the time to install the ‘IIS 6 WMI Compatibility’ feature. It is mandatory for your following Exchange 2010 SP2 installation, because of the new ‘Outlook Mini’ feature, which requires this feature on your CAS server roles.

Schedule

5 minutes for /prepareAD
15 minutes for replication (more if you have higher replication times set on your site links)
5 minutes for feature prerequisits
30 minutes for finishing SP2 setup per system

so you should be through with it within a hour for your first system and schedule 30 minutes for every following systems …

Reboot after SP2 installation should not be necessary.

And think about to disable Anti Virus Scanning on the box you’re going to perform Exchange 2010 SP2 Setup for upgrade.

Read the prerequisits before starting your installation

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb691354.aspx

Recommendations on Reseeding Exchange 2010 databases

Thomas K.H. Bittner — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 21:22:55 GMT

When I met my former fellow Microsoft MVP, Mark Arnold, and Microsoft Technical Architect, Alex Jauch, from NetApp on Microsoft Tech-Ed 2011 in Atlanta, I was also able to watch some new achievements they have had on Exchange storage and Hyper-V Virtual Machine Management.

One of the major achievements has been regarding reseeding Exchange 2010 databases.

Who ever had to reseed an Exchange database knows what I’m talking about.

Follow this link to a new article

https://communities.netapp.com/community/netapp-blogs/msenviro/blog/2011/12/01/don-t-reseed-that-exchange-server-2010-database

which also contains a link to a nice video showing you how to accelerate your future reseeding tasks.

Exchange DAG and Cluster recommended Updates

Thomas K.H. Bittner — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 16:45:12 GMT

My former Microsoft MVP fellow and well-known Microsoft Exchange Cluster Expert, Scott Schnoll, published a new blog post giving a headsup on recommended updates for Windows Failover Cluster environments with Exchange DAG implemented.

It is worth reading his blog post now and prepare for some patching soon.

http://blogs.technet.com/b/exchange/archive/2011/11/20/recommended-windows-hotfix-for-database-availability-groups-running-windows-server-2008-r2.aspx

Partly Cloudy and forecast for 2012

Thomas K.H. Bittner — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 09:32:44 GMT

As you may already know, there will be some essential changes with several Microsoft technologies in next version 2012 coming up.

According to those changes infrastructure design will also need to be adjusted. As well dynamic computing architectures and hardware selection in regards of storage.

The guys from NetApp have published a nice document for you to give you a feeling what needs to be taken into your conclusions about next infrastructure designs in regards of storage for your virtualization infrastrucuture and of course may be also for Exchange storage.

You should read this following this link

http://media.netapp.com/documents/tr-3874.pdf

Exchange for Hosters

Thomas K.H. Bittner — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 14:05:14 GMT

As you know, this feature was removed from the current version of Exchange. There are some features back with Exchange 2010 SP1 back not as we had it in the past with legacy versions.

Now with Exchange 2010 SP2 we will get back functionality on a standard On-Premise Exchange environment.

Read

http://blogs.technet.com/b/hameroff/archive/2011/08/08/so-you-want-to-host-exchange.aspx

and

http://blogs.technet.com/b/exchange/archive/2011/08/30/exchange-server-2010-sp2-and-support-for-hosting-exchange.aspx

Best Practices for Microsoft Virtualization and Netapp Storage for Hyper-V

Thomas K.H. Bittner — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 06:45:20 GMT

A consolidated version of the former articles about this scenario has been published by ‘NetApp for Microsoft Environments’ Team.

You’ll find the detailed documentation about NetApp Storage Best Practices for Microsoft Virtualization and NetApp Snap-Manager for Hyper-V here.

The NetApp best practices for Microsoft virtualization have been covered in sections 1-11 of the whitepaper and the best practices for SnapManager for Hyper-V follow thereafter.

They updated several sections and added new ones. Some of the must reads are the sections on backup and recovery, AV exclusions, automation , monitoring and management.

Under "Best Practices on SnapManager for Hyper-V", they added a section on how to perform disaster recovery using SMHV powershell cmdlets. There's also a list of important KB articles that will be prove handy while troubleshooting common SMHV related issues.

They also posted a quick 10 step guide in the appendix section that has instructions to deploy Windows 2008 R2 Hyper-V Cluster environment on NetApp storage.

NetApp Storage Systems in Microsoft Systems Environment

Thomas K.H. Bittner — Tue, 03 May 2011 11:05:20 GMT

NetApp published a new article and guide how their storage environment and solutions work in Windows Systems architectures and infrastructures.

The article gives you a lot valued information about how it works with Domain Controllers in Active Directory in many aspects, for example, it describes how NetApp storage server discovery and redirecting DC/KDC/LDAP services.

The document describes how NetApp storage systems work seamlessly in the Microsoft Windows environment and how they enable administrator to effortlessly manage data by making use of standard Microsoft services and features such as Active Directory, IntelliMirror, Volume Shadow Copy, Access-Based Enumeration, Offline File Caching, Auditing, Distributed File System (DFS), File Screening, and CIFS Virus Protection.

TR-3367 - NetApp Storage Systems in a Microsoft Windows Environment

Microsoft iSCSI Software Target now available

Thomas K.H. Bittner — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 05:56:14 GMT

All new OS have the iSCSI Initiator client already available out of the box. The server side component was only available for Windows Storage Server.

Now it is available for all other server types too.

How to use it with a Hyper-V Cluster read the blog from Jose Barreto

http://blogs.technet.com/b/josebda/archive/2009/01/31/step-by-step-using-the-microsoft-iscsi-software-target-with-hyper-v-standalone-full-vhd.aspx

Update for Hyper-V BPA available

Thomas K.H. Bittner — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 08:03:39 GMT

There is now an update for Hyper-V BPA available which fixes a few issues and handles the new Dynamic Memory and RemoteFX features under Service Pack 1.

This update is for Windows Server 2008 R2 with and without SP1.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2485986

Secure Access to your Cloud Services

Thomas K.H. Bittner — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 16:06:24 GMT

Moving to the Cloud is going on and so we will have more and more On-Premise and Cloud environments living site by site.

Securing access to Cloud Services will be more relevant for the future.

A great article on this topic has been published by Yuri Diogenes, Senior Security Support Escalation Engineer on Microsoft Forefront Team.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/gg607680.aspx

Install a Hyper-V Cluster

Thomas K.H. Bittner — Sat, 19 Feb 2011 14:22:46 GMT

A complex challenge is to install a Hyper-V Cluster.

Chris Collins from NetApp has put together all the necessary steps to achieve such a Hyper-V Cluster.

Find here the checklist from Alex Jauch from NetApp who published the necessary steps to finally provision a Hyper-V Cluster.

A complete technical article will follow.

Architecting iSCSI Storage for Hyper-V

Thomas K.H. Bittner — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 14:13:37 GMT

A very interesting article about this has been published here.

How is Hyper-V supporting iSCSI technologies? How can iSCSI storage provided for guest systems? What is best practise configuration? How to achieve the best data throughput? This and other questions are subject of this document.

How incorrectly formatted NTFS volumes affects Exchange

Thomas K.H. Bittner — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 19:32:13 GMT

Here is a really important article descibing how incorrectly formatted NTFS volumes affects Exchange

http://blogs.technet.com/b/mikelag/archive/2011/02/09/how-fragmentation-on-incorrectly-formatted-ntfs-volumes-affects-exchange.aspx

Thanks to Mike Lagase sharing this with us.

More Performance with SMBv2x on Windows and NetApp

Thomas K.H. Bittner — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 17:22:23 GMT

NetApp has prepared an interesting performance test with new SMBv2.x available with Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008. The NetApp OnTap operating system has already been updated to support SMBv2.

Find here the result figures about performance increase with SMBv2.x

Best Practise Deployment Exchange 2010 with NetApp Storage

Thomas K.H. Bittner — Sat, 29 May 2010 08:33:02 GMT

In the May issue of Tech OnTap an article has been published that describes some of the new features for Exchange 2010 and discusses best practices for deploying it with NetApp storage including HA, virtualization, and storage efficiency. You can check out the article at

http://communities.netapp.com/docs/DOC-5965