NPP Training series – How does it work – CVM – Software Defined

Posted on November 6, 2015 by Robert Corradini

To continue NPP training series here is my next topic: How does it work – CVM – Software Defined

If you missed other parts of my series, check out links below:
Part 1 – NPP Training series – Nutanix Terminology
Part 2 – NPP Training series – Nutanix Terminology
Cluster Architecture with Hyper-V
Data Structure on Nutanix with Hyper-V
I/O Path Overview
Drive Breakdown

To give credit, most of the content was taken from Steve Poitras’s “Nutanix Bible” blog as his content is the most accurate and then I put a Hyper-V lean to it. Also, he just rocks…other than being a Sea Hawks Fan :).

Software-Defined

As mentioned before (likely numerous times), the Nutanix platform is a software-based solution which ships as a bundled software + hardware appliance. The controller VM or what we call the Nutanix CVM is where the vast majority of the Nutanix software and logic sits and was designed from the beginning to be an extensible and pluggable architecture. A key benefit to being software-defined and not relying upon any hardware offloads or constructs is around extensibility. As with any product life-cycle, advancements and new features will always be introduced.

By not relying on any custom ASIC/FPGA or hardware capabilities, Nutanix can develop and deploy these new features through a simple software update. This means that the deployment of a new feature (e.g., deduplication) can be deployed by upgrading the current version of the Nutanix software. This also allows newer generation features to be deployed on legacy hardware models. For example, say you’re running a workload running an older version of Nutanix software on a prior generation hardware platform (e.g., 2400). The running software version doesn’t provide deduplication capabilities which your workload could benefit greatly from. To get these features, you perform a rolling upgrade of the Nutanix software version while the workload is running, and you now have deduplication. It’s really that easy.

Similar to features, the ability to create new “adapters” or interfaces into Distributed Storage Fabric is another key capability. When the product first shipped, it solely supported iSCSI for I/O from the hypervisor, this has now grown to include NFS and SMB for Hyper-V. In the future, there is the ability to create new adapters for various workloads and hypervisors (HDFS, etc.).

And again, all of this can be deployed via a software update. This is contrary to most legacy infrastructures, where a hardware upgrade or software purchase is normally required to get the “latest and greatest” features. With Nutanix, it’s different. Since all features are deployed in software, they can run on any hardware platform, any hypervisor, and be deployed through simple software upgrades.

The following figure shows a logical representation of what this software-defined controller framework (Nutanix CVM) looks like:Next up, NPP Training Series – How does it all work – Disk Balancing

Until next time, Rob…

Deploying ADFS on Nutanix – Installing and Configuring – Part 2

Posted on October 28, 2015 by Robert Corradini

Deploying and configuring Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS) 2012 R2 for Office 365 can be broken down into 4 blog posts:

Install and Configuring ADFS (this post)
Configuring Name Resolution and additional nodes
Install ADFS Proxy (Coming Soon)
Leverage ADFS with Office 365 (Coming Soon)
New automated methods of setting up ADFS with Office 365 (Coming Soon)

Continue reading →

Nutanix NOS 4.5 Released…

Posted on October 6, 2015 by Robert Corradini

Hi all…It’s been a few weeks since my last blog post. I’ve been busy with some travel to Microsoft Technology Centers and working on the Nutanix Ready Program. Yesterday, Nutanix released NOS 4.5. This exciting upgrade adds some great features.. Sit back and get ready to enjoy the ride…release notes below.

Table 1. Terminology Updates
New Terminology	Formerly Known As
Acropolis base software	Nutanix operating system, NOS
Acropolis hypervisor, AHV	Nutanix KVM hypervisor
Acropolis API	Nutanix API and Acropolis API
Acropolis App Mobility Fabric	Acropolis virtualization management and administration
Acropolis Distributed Storage Fabric, DSF	Nutanix Distributed Filesystem (NDFS)
Prism Element	Web console (for cluster management); also known as the Prism web console; a cluster managed by Prism Central
Prism Central	Prism Central (for multicluster management)
Block fault tolerance	Block awareness

What’s New in Acropolis base software 4.5

Bandwidth Limit on Schedule

The bandwidth throttling policy provides you with an option to set the maximum limit of the network bandwidth. You can specify the policy depending on the usage of your network.

Note: You can configure bandwidth throttling only while updating the remote site. This option is not available during the configuration of remote site.

Cloud Connect for Azure

The cloud connect feature for Azure enables you to back up and restore copies of virtual machines and files to and from an on-premise cluster and a Nutanix Controller VM located on the Microsoft Azure cloud. Once configured through the Prism web console, the remote site cluster is managed and monitored through the Data Protection dashboard like any other remote site you have created and configured. This feature is currently supported for ESXi hypervisor environments only.

Common Access Card Authentication

You can configure two-factor authentication for web console users that have an assigned role and use a Common Access Card (CAC).

Default Container and Storage Pool Upon Cluster Creation

When you create a cluster, the Acropolis base software automatically creates a container and storage pool for you.

Erasure Coding

Complementary to deduplication and compression, erasure coding increases the effective or usable cluster storage capacity. [FEAT-1096]
- This is very cool tech…Check out Josh Odgers blog post for more details on EC

Hyper-V Configuration through Prism Web Console

After creating a Nutanix Hyper-V cluster environment, you can use the Prism web console to join the hosts to the domain, create the Hyper-V failover cluster, and also enable Kerberos.

Image Service Now Available in the Prism Web Console

The Prism web console Image Configuration workflow enables a user to upload ISO or disk images (in ESXi or Hyper-V format) to a Nutanix AHV cluster by specifying a remote repository URL or by uploading a file from a local machine.

MPIO Access to iSCSI Disks (Windows Guest VMs)

Acropolis base software 4.5 feature to help enforce access control to volume groups and expose volume group disks as dual namespace disks.

Network Mapping

Network mapping allows you to control network configuration for the VMs when they are started on the remote site. This feature enables you to specify network mapping between the source cluster and the destination cluster. The remote site wizard includes an option to create one or more network mappings and allows you to select source and destination network from the drop-down list. You can also modify or remove network mappings as part of modifying the remote sites.

Nutanix Cluster Check

Acropolis base software 4.5 includes Nutanix Cluster Check (NCC) 2.1, which includes many new checks and functionality.
NCC 2.1 Release Notes

NX-6035C Clusters Usable as a Target for Replication

You can use a Nutanix NX-6035C cluster as a target for Nutanix native replication and snapshots, created by source Nutanix clusters in your environment. You can configure the NX-6035C as a target for snapshots, set a longer retention policy than on the source cluster (for example), and restore snapshots to the source cluster as needed. The source cluster hypervisor environment can be AHV, Hyper-V, or ESXi. See Nutanix NX-6035C Replication Target in Notes and Cautions.

Note: You cannot use an NX-6035C cluster as a backup target with third-party backup software.

Prism Central Can Now Be Deployed on the Acropolis Hypervisor (AHV)

Nutanix has introduced a Prism Central OVA which can be deployed on an AHV cluster by leveraging Image Service features. See the Web Console Guide for installation details.
Prism Central 4.5 Release Notes

Prism Central Scalability

By increasing memory capacity to 16GB and expanding its virtual disk to 260GB, Prism Central can support a maximum of 100 clusters and 10000 VMs (across all the clusters and assuming each VM has an average of two virtual disks). Please contact Nutanix support if you decide to change the configuration of the Prism Central VM.
Prism Central 4.5 Release Notes
Prism Central Scalability, Compatibility and Deployment

Simplified Add Node Workflow

This release leverages Foundation 3.0 imaging capabilities and automates the manual steps previously required for expanding a cluster through the Prism web console.

SNMP

The Nutanix SNMP MIB database includes the following changes:
- The database includes tables for monitoring hypervisor instances and virtual machines.
- The service status table named serviceStatusTable is obsolete. Analogous information is available in a new table named controllerStatusTable. The new table has a smaller number of MIB fields for displaying the status of only essential services in the Acropolis base software.
- The disk status table (diskStatusTable), storage pool table (storagePoolInformationTable), and cluster information table include one or more new MIB fields.
The SNMP feature also includes the following enhancements:
- From the web console, you can trigger test alerts that are sent to all configured SNMP trap receivers.
- SNMP service logs are now written to the following log file: /home/nutanix/data/logs/snmp_manager.out

Support for Minor Release Upgrades for ESXi Hosts

Acropolis base software 4.5 enables you to patch upgrade ESXi hosts with minor release versions of ESXi host software through the Controller VM cluster command. Nutanix qualifies specific VMware updates and provides a related JSON metadata upgrade file for one-click upgrade, but now customers can patch hosts by using the offline bundle and md5sum checksum available from VMware, and using the Controller VM cluster command.

Note: Nutanix supports the ability to patch upgrade ESXi hosts with minor versions that are greater than or released after the Nutanix qualified version, but Nutanix might not have qualified those minor releases. Please see the the Nutanix hypervisor support statement in our Support FAQ.

VM High Availability in Acropolis

In case of a node failure, VM High Availability (VM-HA) ensures that VMs running on the node are automatically restarted on the remaining nodes within the cluster. VM-HA can optionally be configured to reserve spare failover capacity. This capacity reservation can be distributed across the nodes in chunks known as “segments” to provide better overall resource utilization.

Windows Guest VM Failover Clustering

Acropolis base software 4.5 supports configuring Windows guest VMs as a failover cluster. This clustering type enables applications on a failed VM to fail over to and run on another guest VM on the same or different host. This release supports this feature on Hyper-V hosts with in-guest VM iSCSI and SCSI 3 Persistent Reservation (PR).

Tech Preview Features

Note: Do not use tech preview features on production systems or storage used or data stored on production systems.

File Level Restore

The file level restore feature allows a virtual machine user to restore a file within a virtual machine from the Nutanix protected snapshot with minimal Nutanix administrator intervention.

Note: This feature should be used only after upgrading all nodes in the cluster to Acropolis base software 4.5.

What’s New in Prism Central

Prism Central for Acropolis Hypervisor (AHV)

Nutanix has introduced a Prism Central VM which is compatible with AHV to enable multicluster management in this environment. Prism Central now supports all three major hypervisors: AHV, Hyper-V, and ESXi.

Prism Central Scalability

The Prism Central VM requires these resources to support the clusters and VMs indicated in the table.

Prism Central vCPU	Prism Central Memory (GB, default)	Total Storage Required for Prism Central VM (GB)	Clusters Supported	VMs Supported (across all clusters)	Virtual disks per VM
4	8	256	50	5000	2

Release Notes | NCC 2.1

Learn More About NCC Health Checks

You can learn more about the Nutanix Cluster Check (NCC) health checks on the Nutanix support portal. The portal includes a series of Knowledge Base articles describing most NCC health checks run by the ncc health_checks command.

What’s New in NCC 2.1

NCC 2.1 includes support for:

Acropolis base software 4.5 or later
NOS 4.1.3 or later only
All Nutanix NX Series models
Dell XC Series of Web-scale Converged Appliances

Tech Preview Features

The following features are available as a Tech Preview in NCC 2.1.

Run NCC health checks in parallel

You can specify the number of NCC health checks to run in parallel to reduce the amount of time it takes for all checks to complete. For example, the command ncc health_checks run_all –parallel=25 will run 25 of the health checks in parallel.

Use npyscreen to display NCC status

You can specify npyscreen as part of the ncc command to display status to the terminal window. Specify –npyscreen=true as part of the ncc health_checks command.

New Checks in This Release

Check Name	Description	KB Article
check_disks	Check whether disks are discoverable by the host. Pass if the disks are discovered.	KB 2712
check_pending_reboot	Check if host has pending reboots. Pass if host does not have pending reboots.	KB 2713
check_storage_heavy_node	Verify that nodes such as the storage-heavy NX-6025C are running a service VM and no guest VMs. Verify that nodes such as the storage-heavy NX-6025C are runningthe Acropolis hypervisor only.	KB 2726 KB 2727
check_utc_clock	Check if UTC clock is enabled.	KB 2711
cluster_version_check	Verifiy that the cluster is running a released version of NOS or the Acropolis base software. This check returns an INFO status and the version if the cluster is running a pre-release version.	KB 2720
compression_disabled_check	Verify if compression is enabled.	KB 2725
data_locality_check	Check if VMs that are part of a cluster with metro availability are in two different datastores (that is, fetching local data).	KB 2732
dedup_and_compression_enabled_containers_check	Checks if any container have deduplication and compression enabled together.	KB 2721
dimm_same_speed_check	Check that all DIMMs have the same speed.	KB 2723
esxi_ivybridge_performance_degradation_check	Check for the Ivy Bridge performance degradation scenario on ESXi clusters.	KB 2729
gpu_driver_installed_check	Check the version of the installed GPU driver.	KB 2714
quad_nic_driver_version_check	Check the version of the installed quad port NIC driver version.	KB 2715
vmknics_subnet_check	Check if any vmknics have same subnet (different subnets are not supported).	KB 2722

Foundation Release 3.0

This release includes the following enhancements and changes:

A major new implementation that allows for node imaging and cluster creation through the Controller VM for factory-prepared nodes on the same subnet. This process significantly reduces network complications and simplifies the workflow. (The existing workflow remains for imaging bare metal nodes.) The new implementation includes the following enhancements:
- A Java aplet that automatically discovers factory-prepared nodes on the subnet and allows you to select the first one to image.
- A simplified GUI to select and configure the nodes, define the cluster, select the hypervisor and Acropolis base software versions to use, and monitor the imaging and cluster creation process.

Customers may create a cluster using the new Controller VM-based implementation in Foundation 3.0. Imaging bare metal nodes is still restricted to Nutanix sales engineers, support engineers, and partners.

The new implementation is incorporated in the Acropolis base software version 4.5 to allow for node imaging when adding nodes to an existing cluster through the Prism GUI.
The cluster creation workflow does not use IPMI, and for both cluster creation and bare-metal imaging, the host operating system install is done within an “installer VM” in Phoenix.
To see the progress of a host operating system installation, point a VNC console at the node’s Controller VM IP address on port 5901.
Foundation no longer offers the option to run diagnostics.py as a post-imaging test. Should you wish to run this test, you can download it from the Tools & Firmware page on the Nutanix support portal.
There is no Foundation upgrade path to the new Controller VM implementation; you must download the Java aplet from the Foundation 3.0 download page on the support portal. However, you can upgrade Foundation 2.1.x to 3.0 for the bare metal workflow as follows:

- - Copy the Foundation tarball (foundation-version#.tar.gz) from the support portal to /home/nutanix in your VM.
  - Navigate to /home/nutanix.
  - Enter the following five commands:
    - $ sudo service foundation_service stop
    - $ rm -rf foundation
    - $ tar xzf foundation-version#.tar.gz
    - $ sudo yum install python-scp
    - $ sudo service foundation_service restart

- If the first command (foundation_service stop) is skipped or the commands are not run in order, the user may get bizarre errors after upgrading. To fix this situation, enter the following two commands:

$ sudo pkill -9 foundation
$ sudo service foundation_service restart

Release Notes for each of these products is located at:

Acropolis base software 4.5: https://portal.nutanix.com/#/page/docs/details?targetId=Release_Notes-Acr_v4_5:rel_Release_Notes-Acr_v4_5.html
Prism Central 4.5: https://portal.nutanix.com/#/page/docs/details?targetId=Release_Notes-Acr_v4_5:rel_Release_Notes-Prism_Central_v4_5.html
Nutanix Cluster Check(NCC) 2.1: https://portal.nutanix.com/#/page/docs/details?targetId=Release_Notes-NCC:rel_Release_Notes-NCC_v2_1.html
Foundation 3.0: https://portal.nutanix.com/#/page/docs/details?targetId=Field_Installation_Guide-v3_0:fie_release_notes_foundation_v3_0_r.html

Download URLs:

Acropolis base software 4.5: https://portal.nutanix.com/#/page/releases/nosDetails?targetId=4.5&targetVal=EA
Prism Central 4.5: https://portal.nutanix.com/#/page/releases/prismDetails
Nutanix Cluster Check 2.1: https://portal.nutanix.com/#/page/static/supportTools
Foundation 3.0: https://portal.nutanix.com/#/page/foundation/list
Nutanix AHV Metadata(Acropolis base 4.5) AHV-20150921: http://download.nutanix.com/hypervisor/kvm/4.5/host-bundle-el6.nutanix.20150921-metadata.json
Nutanix AHV (Acropolis base 4.5) AHV-20150921: http://download.nutanix.com/hypervisor/kvm/4.5/host-bundle-el6.nutanix.20150921.tar.gz

Until next time, Rob…

Nutanix SCVMM Fast Clones Plug-in

Posted on August 3, 2015 by Robert Corradini

Hi Everyone…I love to show off the cool Microsoft integrations that Nutanix has and most recently Nutanix released System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) 2012 R2 Fast Clones plug-in.

With NOS 4.1.3, Nutanix has released a Fast Clone plugin for SCVMM. The plug-in has the ability to provide space efficient, low impact clones from SCVMM and quickly. The plugin is a wrapper around Nutanix powershell commands for Fast Cones. The plugin does need proper access rights to the Hyper-V hosts and SCVMM and already should be setup for most environments that have Nutanix with Hyper-V deployed. You will need to install the plugin on the SCVMM host along with the Nutanix powershell command-lets.

Once you have the SCVMM Fast Clones plug-in installed, you can start creating Fast Clones right away. Installation is quick and easy and creating clones is just as easy as shown below.

To create VM clones using the Nutanix Fast Clones wizard, follow the below steps:

Start the SCVMM
Navigate to the Nutanix hosts.
Select a host and then select the VM to be cloned.
To invoke the wizard, do one of the following: Click the “Nutanix Fast Clone” button on the top menu-bar. Right-click the target VM and select “Nutanix Fast Clone” from the pop-up context menu:
In the Introduction screen, read the instructions and then click the “Next” button. NOTE: On start of the wizard, it makes a connection to the VMM to be able to communicate with it to run SCVMM PowerShell cmdlets to gather information about the selected VM.
The “Identity” screen is displayed. The “Source VM Name” and “Source VM Host Name” is prepopulated, enter the following information and then click the “Next” button:
1. Clone Type: Click the “Clone One Virtual Machine” radio button and enter a name for the clone when creating a single clone or click the “Clone Multiple Virtual Machines” radio button and enter the following information:
  1. VM Prefix Name: This is the root part of the new VM name.
  2. Beginning Suffix: a number to start the numbering of the new VMs
  3. Number of Clones: a number between 1 and 100.
In the Authentication screen, enter the Prism and VMM Service Account user names and passwords in the appropriate fields, and then click the “Next” button.
In the “Select Path” screen, select the destination path and then click the “Next” button. Leave the default path “as is” or change it to a new path as needed by clicking the “Change the default path” box. Click the Browse button to select a destination path for the clone VMs. This is the path where virtual machine configuration files will be stored. The path must be on the same Nutanix SMB share as the VM configuration file.
In the “Add Properties” screen, click the appropriate radio button to either power on or not power on the VMs after cloning and then click the “Next” button.
In the Summary screen below, review (confirm) the settings are correct.

Clicking the “View Script” button displays the script to be executed:

Clicking the “Enable Verbose Messages” displays detailed log messages as the VMs are being created.
When the settings are correct, click the “Create” button to create the cloned VM(s). An hour glass is displayed and progress messages are displayed.
After the clones are created, click the Finish button to close the wizard and you just created VM’s at lighting speed.

If you want to check out Fast Clones for your environment, you can download Fast Clones from the Nutanix Portal at https://portal.nutanix.com.

Below is a demo video shows traditional cloning vs Fast Clones that my buddy @mcghem created. It shows the awesome benefit of Fast Clones.

https://youtu.be/cWGEvjHZxdw

As always, if you have any questions please post a comment.

Until next time….Rob

Understanding Windows Azure Pack – How to guide with Express Edition on Nutanix – Deploying Service Provider Foundation – Part 4

Posted on June 16, 2015 by Robert Corradini

To continue the Windows Azure Pack series, here is my next topic: Installing and Configuring Service Provider Foundation
If you missed other parts of the series, check links below:
Part 1 – Understanding Windows Azure Pack
Part 2 – Understanding Windows Azure Pack – Deployment Scenarios
Part 3 – Understanding Windows Azure Pack – How to guide with Express Edition on Nutanix – Environment Requirements
There are 2 main steps to deploying WAP (Windows Azure Pack) on Nutanix:

Deploying SPF (Service Provider Foundation) – This blog post
Deploying Windows Azure Pack (coming soon)

Service Provider Foundation

SPF is provided with System Center 2012 – Orchestrator, a component of System Center 2012 R2. SPF exposes an extensible OData web service that interacts with System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM). This enables service providers and hosters to design and implement multi-tenant self-service portals that integrate IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) capabilities available on System Center 2012 R2. The following picture shows how System Center w/SPF interacts with WAP to provide VM Cloud Services (see TechNet article for more info):
SPF-overview Service Provider Foundation As with every installation, SPF requires additional software, features and server roles. Setup wizard checks prerequisites and reports about their status. Unfortunately, there is no “button” to install all of requirements automatically. I’ve wrote a script to automate this process (see below). Please note: Don’t try to install SPF on the SCVMM Server. It’s not supported.
Requirements:

SQL Server 2012 SP1 or higher instance (Already Deployed)
OS – Windows Server 2012 R2 VM (Already Deployed)
- 2 CPU Cores
- 4 Gigs of RAM
- 100 Gig OS Drive
Feature – Management OData Internet Information Services (IIS) Extension
Feature – NET Framework 4.5 features, WCF Services, and HTTP Activation.
Web Server (IIS) server. Include the following services:
Basic Authentication
Windows Authentication
Application Deployment ASP.NET 4.5
Application Development ISAPI Extensions
Application Deployment ISAPI Filters
IIS Management Scripts and Tools Role Service
Downloads:
WCF Data Services 5.0 for OData V3
ASP.NET MVC 4
Virtual Machine Manager 2012 R2 Console
Certificates: self-signed (wizard creates one automatically) or obtained SSL-certificate (recommended for production)

This script will install all requirements except SCVMM console (please note that SCVMM console has to be installed manually):

#IIS + Process activation model
Install-WindowsFeature Web-Asp-Net45,Web-Scripting-Tools,Web-Basic-Auth,Web-Windows-Auth,NET-WCF-Services45,Web-ISAPI-Ext,Web-ISAPI-Filter,Web-Scripting-Tools,WAS-Process-Model,WAS-Config-APIs,ManagementOdata
#Download and install WcfDataServices and AspNetMVC4
New-Item C:SPFRequirements -ItemType Directory
Invoke-WebRequest http://download.microsoft.com/download/8/F/9/8F93DBBD-896B-4760-AC81-646F61363A6D/WcfDataServices.exe -OutFile C:SPFRequirementswcfdatasvc.exe
Invoke-WebRequest http://download.microsoft.com/download/2/F/6/2F63CCD8-9288-4CC8-B58C-81D109F8F5A3/AspNetMVC4Setup.exe -OutFile C:SPFRequirementsaspnetmvc.exe
Set-Location C:SPFRequirements
.aspnetmvc.exe /quiet
Wait-Process aspnetmvc
.wcfdatasvc.exe /quiet
Wait-Process wcfdatasvc
Write-Host “All prerequisites are installed. Insert your SCVMM 2012 R2 DVD and install SCVMM Console manually. Then your environment will be ready for SPF installation“

Required user accounts

We need to create a domain user account for the Service Provider Foundation application pools and a domain group that will be used for the permissions on the individual virtual directories created by the installer.

In my test lab I have created the following domain service accounts. They do not need any special rights other than domain users group.

spfadmnsvc – SPF Admin Web Service
spfprovsvc – SPF Provisioning Web Service
spfusagesvc – SPF Provisioning Web Service

And the following domain group

SPF_Admins – Group for SPF Administrators – Add all your WAP admins to this gorup

This admin group should be added to the local Administrators group on the SPF server.

Certificates

The Service Provider Foundation provides an extensible OData web service. Communications to this web service can and should be encrypted by SSL. SSL requires certificates. The Service Provider Foundation allows for self-singed certificates (for testing purposes) and certificates issued by a standalone Certificate Authority, an enterprise Certificate Authority or a public Certificate Authority. The Service Provider Foundation install defaults to self-signed (wizard creates one automatically) or you can obtain a certificate from a Public CA for production.

Installation

The Service Provider Foundation setup is on the System Center Orchestrator R2 media.

When installing, login to the SPF server as a user that has DBO/SA rights to the SQL 2012 instance that will be hosting SPF databases.

Mount ISO with Orchestrator and run SetupOrchestrator.exe and click on “Service Provider Foundation”

Click Install

Accept license terms and click Next

We’ve already installed all prerequisites using my script, so just click Next

Define SQL Server 2012 SP1 Instance Name , Port Number and click Next. If you unable to reach SQL Server you have to open firewall ports (https://support.microsoft.com/kb/968872) or check SQL TCP properties

Choose certificate type (For test lab, use self-signed and can be changed out later) and click Next
spf7 Service Provider Foundation

Define application pool credentials (spfadminsvc) and SPF_Admin Group that will have an access to SPF services and click Next. It’s best practices to create new domain accounts for every SPF services instead of using Network Service account.
spf8 Service Provider Foundation
Provider Web Service properties , click Next
spf9 Service Provider Foundation
Usage Web Service configuration, click Next
spf10 Service Provider Foundation
Windows updates + CEIP – yes (Microsoft needs your feedback 🙂 ), click Next
spf11 Service Provider Foundation
Click Install
spf12 Service Provider Foundation
Setup is complete!
spf13 Service Provider Foundation
Update SPF with the latest rollup (https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3021802) or use Windows Update.
Please note, the latest roll-up causing an issue in IIS and breaks SPF Web from working. I ran into this during my lab deployment. Check out this blog post on “System Center 2012 R2 : Update Rollup 4 breaks the SPF website” that fixes the issue.
This completes the SPF install. In a future blog post, we will be integrating SPF with WAP and SCVMM.
Additional links:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj642895.aspx
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn266007.aspx
Next up in my series, Installing the Windows Azure Pack on Nutanix

Until next time, Rob….

NPP Training series – Cluster Components with Hyper-V

Posted on June 2, 2015 by Robert Corradini

To continue NPP training series here is my next topic: Cluster Components

If you missed other parts of my series, check out links below:
Part 1 – NPP Training series – Nutanix Terminology
Part 2 – NPP Training series – Nutanix Terminology
Cluster Architecture with Hyper-V
Data Structure on Nutanix with Hyper-V
I/O Path Overview

To give credit, most of the content was taken from Steve Poitras’s “Nutanix Bible” blog as his content is the most accurate and then I put a Hyper-V lean to it.

Cluster Components

The Nutanix platform is composed of the following high-level components:

NDFS_Cluster Components

Cassandra

Key Role: Distributed metadata store
Description: Cassandra stores and manages all of the cluster metadata in a distributed ring like manner based upon a heavily modified Apache Cassandra. The Paxos algorithm is utilized to enforce strict consistency. This service runs on every node in the cluster. Cassandra is accessed via an interface called Medusa.

Medusa

Key Role: Abstraction layer
Description: Medusa is the Nutanix abstraction layer that sits in front of the cluster’s distributed metadata database, which is managed by Cassandra..

Zookeeper

Key Role: Cluster configuration manager
Description: Zeus stores all of the cluster configuration including hosts, IPs, state, etc. and is based upon Apache Zookeeper. This service runs on three nodes in the cluster, one of which is elected as a leader. The leader receives all requests and forwards them to the peers. If the leader fails to respond a new leader is automatically elected. Zookeeper is accessed via an interface called Zeus.

Zeus

Key Role: Library interface
Description: Zeus is the Nutanix library interface that all other components use to access the cluster configuration, such as IP addresses. Currently implemented using Zookeeper, Zeus is responsible for critical, cluster-wide data such as cluster configuration and leadership locks.

Stargate

Key Role: Data I/O manager
Description: Stargate is responsible for all data management and I/O operations and is the main interface from Hyper-V (via SMB 3.0). This service runs on every node in the cluster in order to serve localized I/O.

Curator

Key Role: Map reduce cluster management and cleanup
Description: Curator is responsible for managing and distributing tasks throughout the cluster including disk balancing, proactive scrubbing, and many more items. Curator runs on every node and is controlled by an elected Curator Master who is responsible for the task and job delegation. There are two scan types for Curator, a full scan which occurs around every 6 hours and a partial scan which occurs every hour.

Prism

Key Role: UI and API
Description: Prism is the management gateway for component and administrators to configure and monitor the Nutanix cluster. This includes Ncli, the HTML5 UI and REST API. Prism runs on every node in the cluster and uses an elected leader like all components in the cluster.

prism1 Cluster Components prism2 Cluster Components

Genesis

Key Role: Cluster component & service manager
Description: Genesis is a process which runs on each node and is responsible for any services interactions (start/stop/etc.) as well as for the initial configuration. Genesis is a process which runs independently of the cluster and does not require the cluster to be configured/running. The only requirement for genesis to be running is that Zookeeper is up and running. The cluster_init and cluster_status pages are displayed by the genesis process.

Chronos

Key Role: Job and Task scheduler
Description: Chronos is responsible for taking the jobs and tasks resulting from a Curator scan and scheduling/throttling tasks among nodes. Chronos runs on every node and is controlled by an elected Chronos Master who is responsible for the task and job delegation and runs on the same node as the Curator Master.

Cerebro

Key Role: Replication/DR manager
Description: Cerebro is responsible for the replication and DR capabilities of DFS(Distributed Storage Fabric). This includes the scheduling of snapshots, the replication to remote sites, and the site migration/failover. Cerebro runs on every node in the Nutanix cluster and all nodes participate in replication to remote clusters/sites.

Pithos

Key Role: vDisk configuration manager
Description: Pithos is responsible for vDisk (DFS file) configuration data. Pithos runs on every node and is built on top of Cassandra.

Next up, Data Structures which comprises high level structs for Nutanix Distributed Filesystem

Until next time, Rob….

Understanding Windows Azure Pack – Part 1

Posted on May 31, 2015 by Robert Corradini

With Azure Stack coming early next year….Windows Azure Pack is still of great value currently for service providers to organizations wanted to provide IaaS (Infrastructure as a service) and PaaS (Platform as a Service). I get asked all the time “What is Azure Pack”, “How do you deploy and what do I get started? etc…This blog series will give you the fundamental rundown on Windows Azure Pack and how it compares to Windows Azure Public Cloud…Deployment Scenarios on Nutanix and a how to deploy step-by-step Azure Pack express edition on Nutanix. So sit back and enjoy the show…

What is Windows Azure?

To understand what Windows Azure Pack is, you first need to be familiar with Windows Azure, Microsoft’s public cloud platform. To understand what Windows Azure is all about, check out the Azure website, but here are some key points of Windows Azure:

Windows Azure for service hosting and management, low-level scalable storage, computation and networking
Microsoft SQL Services for a wide range of database services and reporting
Microsoft .NET Services which are service-based implementations of familiar .NET Framework concepts such as workflow and access control
Live Services for a consistent way for users to store, share and synchronize documents, photos, files and information across their PCs, phones, PC applications and Web sites
Microsoft SharePoint Services and Microsoft Dynamics CRM Services for business content, collaboration and rapid solution development in the cloud.

As a cloud platform from Microsoft that provides a wide range of different services, Windows Azure lets you build, deploy, and manage solutions for almost any purpose you can imagine. In other words, Windows Azure is a world of unlimited possibilities. Whether you’re a large enterprise spanning several continents that needs to run server workloads, or a small business that wants a website that has a global presence, Windows Azure can provide a platform for building applications that can leverage the cloud to meet the needs of your business…
So now, Let’s look at the definition that Microsoft uses for describing Windows Azure:
Windows Azure is an open and flexible cloud platform that enables you to quickly build, deploy, and manage applications across a global network of Microsoft-managed datacenters. You can build applications using any language, tool, or framework. And you can integrate your public cloud applications with your existing IT environment.
This definition tells us that Windows Azure is a cloud platform, which means you can use it for running your business applications, services, and workloads in the cloud. But it also includes some key words that tell us even more:

Open – Windows Azure provides a set of cloud services that allow you to build and deploy cloud-based applications using almost any programming language, framework, or tool.
Flexible – Windows Azure provides a wide range of cloud services that can let you do everything from hosting your company’s website to running big SQL databases in the cloud. It also includes different features that can help deliver high performance and low latency for cloud-based applications.
Microsoft-managed – Windows Azure services are currently hosted in several datacenters spread across the United States, Europe, and Asia. These datacenters are managed by Microsoft and provide expert global support on a 24x7x365 basis.
Compatible – Cloud applications running on Windows Azure can easily be integrated with on-premises IT environments that utilize the Microsoft Windows Server platform.

Windows Azure provides businesses with four basic categories of cloud-based services:

Compute services
Network services
Data services
App services

At the core of the Windows Azure platform is its ability to execute applications running in the cloud. Windows Azure currently provides four different models for doing this: Web Sites, Virtual Machines, Cloud Services, and Mobile Services. Together these four approaches comprise the compute services portion of the Windows Azure platform, and they can either be used separately or combined together to build more complex solutions that can meet specific business needs.
Now, let’s go though some the main options on Windows Azure….
Windows Azure Web Sites is a scalable, secure, and flexible platform you can use for building web applications that run your business, extend the reach of your brand, and draw in new customers. It has an easy-to-use self-service portal with a gallery of the world’s most popular web solutions including .DotNetNuke, CakePHP, DasBlog, WordPress, and many others. Or you can simply create a new website from scratch and then install a tool like WebMatrix—a free, lightweight web development tool that supports the latest web technologies such as ASP.NET, PHP, HTML5, CSS3, and Node. You can use WebMatrix to create websites and publish applications for Windows Azure. And if you use Microsoft Visual Studio as a development environment, you can download and install a Windows Azure SDK so you can build applications that can take advantage of the scalable cloud computing resources offered by Windows Azure…
Creating a new website with Windows Azure is so easy we have to show you how to do it. Begin by logging on to the Windows Azure Management Portal at https://manage.windowsazure.com using your Microsoft Account username and password. Then select the Compute, Web App tab on the left and either click Quick Create or click the from Gallery button on the command bar as shown here:
Windows Azure Pack The command bar then expands, as shown in the next figure, and allows you to quickly create a new website with no additional configuration, a custom website with either a new or existing database, or a new web application based on an application framework, blog engine, template, or any other app available in the Windows Azure gallery…
Windows Azure Virtual Machines is a scalable, on-demand IaaS platform you can use to quickly provision and deploy server workloads into the cloud. Once deployed, you can then configure, manage, and monitor those virtual machines, load-balance traffic between them, and connect them to other Windows Azure Cloud Services running web roles and worker roles. You can copy virtual hard disks (VHDs) from your on-premises environment into Windows Azure to use as templates for creating new virtual machines. And you can copy VHDs out of Windows Azure and run them locally in your datacenter.
You can create new virtual machines from a standard image available in the Windows Azure gallery. Standard images are included for current versions of Windows Server and for different flavors of Linux. Standard images are also available for Microsoft SharePoint, Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft Dynamics and Microsoft BizTalk Server pre-installed on Windows Server. Standard images are a great way of quickly provisioning new virtual machines, but you can also use images you created on-premises to deploy new virtual machines.
Creating a new virtual machine in Windows Azure is easy. Just open the Windows Azure Management Portal and select Compute, and then Virtual Machine tab on the left. The command bar expands and displays two options for creating virtual machines: Quick Create or From Gallery.
The Quick Create option lets you create a new virtual machine which you can configure later. As shown below, all you need to specify for this option is the DNS name for your virtual machine, the image to use as a template for your virtual machine, the size of the virtual machine (number of cores and memory), a user name and password for administrative access to the virtual machine, and the region or affinity group to which the virtual machine should be assigned:
Windows Azure Pack
The other option, called From Gallery, lets you create a virtual machine by specifying advanced options presented in a series of pages. The first page shown below allows you to choose an image to be used as a template when creating your virtual machine…

Windows Azure Pack vs. Windows Azure

Let’s again review the definition that Microsoft uses for describing Windows Azure:
Windows Azure is an open and flexible cloud platform that enables you to quickly build, deploy, and manage applications across a global network of Microsoft-managed datacenters. You can build applications using any language, tool, or framework. And you can integrate your public cloud applications with your existing IT environment.
Now let’s examine how Microsoft describes Windows Azure Pack. First, here’s how they define Windows Azure Pack on their Server and Cloud Platform site:
The Windows Azure Pack is a collection of Windows Azure technologies available to Microsoft customers at no additional cost. Once installed in your datacenter, the Windows Azure Pack integrates with System Center and Windows Server to help provide a self-service portal for managing services such as websites, Virtual Machines, and Service Bus; a portal for administrators to manage resource clouds; scalable web hosting; and more.
Next, here’s how Microsoft defines Windows Azure Pack in the TechNet Library:
Windows Azure Pack for Windows Server is a collection of Windows Azure technologies, available to Microsoft customers at no additional cost for installation into your data center. It runs on top of Windows Server 2012 R2 and System Center 2012 R2 and, through the use of the Windows Azure technologies, enables you to offer a rich, self-service, multi-tenant cloud, consistent with the public Windows Azure experience.
Comparing these various definitions and reading the linked resources enables us to conclude the following about how Windows Azure Pack compares to Windows Azure:

Both platforms provide a set of cloud services that allow you to build and deploy cloud-based applications using almost any programming language, framework, or tool. But while Windows Azure provides a broad range of several dozen different cloud services, Windows Azure Pack provides only a subset of these services, primarily Web Sites, Virtual Machines and Service Bus.
Cloud applications running on either platform can easily be integrated with on-premises IT environments that utilize Windows Server to enable you to build hybrid solutions.
While Windows Azure is hosted in globally distributed datacenters managed by Microsoft, Windows Azure Pack is something you can deploy within your own datacenter.
And lastly the upcoming Azure Stack will be in full parity with Windows Azure…See my Azure Stack Article

To summarize, Windows Azure Pack lets you bring some of the capabilities of the Windows Azure public cloud platform right into your own datacenter by leveraging your existing infrastructure based on Windows Server and System Center.
In the next article of this series we’ll examine different deploying scenarios with Nutanix for Windows Azure Pack in your datacenter.

NPP Training series – Cluster Architecture with Hyper-V

Posted on May 28, 2015 by Robert Corradini

To continue NPP training series here is my next topic: Cluster Architecture

To give credit, some of this content was taken from Steve Poitras’s “Nutanix Bible” blog as his content is the most accurate and then I put a Hyper-V lean to it.

Cluster Architecture

The Nutanix solution is a converged storage + compute solution which leverages local components and creates a distributed platform for virtualization aka virtual computing platform. The solution is a bundled hardware + software appliance which houses 2 (6000/7000 series) or 4 nodes (1000/2000/3000/3050 series) in a 2U footprint. Each node runs an industry standard hypervisor (ESXi, KVM, Hyper-V currently) and the Nutanix Controller VM (CVM). The Nutanix CVM is what runs the Nutanix software and serves all of the I/O operations for the hypervisor and all VMs running on that host. For the Nutanix units running VMware vSphere, the SCSI controller, which manages the SSD and HDD devices, is directly passed to the CVM leveraging VM-Direct Path (Intel VT-d). In the case of Hyper-V the storage devices are passed through to the CVM. Below is an example of what a typical node logically looks like:

NDFS_NodeDetail2 Cluster Architecture

Together, a group of Nutanix Nodes forms a distributed platform called the Distributed Storage Fabric (DFS). DFS appears to the Hyper-V like any centralized storage array, however all of the I/Os are handled locally to provide the highest performance. More detail on how these nodes form a distributed system can be found below. Below is an example of how these Nutanix nodes form NDFS and then presented up to Hyper-V via SMB 3.0 Share(s):

DFS uses a software-defined, shared-nothing, scale-out approach to storage that eliminates the need for you to deploy a separate SAN along with its performance bottlenecks and scalability limitations. DFS leverages local SSD for fast VM performance and consolidates high capacity HDDs for cost-effective storage capacity.

The application data is intelligently placed in the appropriate storage tier, balancing storage performance and capacity needs. The environment’s noisy VMs on different hosts won’t impact the performance for any workloads—fulfilling key performance requirements for hybrid deployments.
Here are the key points with Hyper-V on Nutanix:

Hypervisor sees the Distributed Storage Fabric (DFS) as one or more SMB 3.0 file shares
Supports features like snapshots, dedupe, compression web-scale out, and disaster recovery
Locally shared storage is comprised of both flash and spinning disks
Variety of models (compute heavy, storage heavy, etc.)
Mix and match models within the same cluster
Pay as you grow – Start small and linearly scale your Microsoft infrastructure in minutes without the scalability shortcomings of traditional servers and storage.

Next up in the NPP Training series – Cluster Components

Rob's Blog – Microsoft Technology Evangelist

The half-life of the Cloud is countered in moments. I am in the middle… understanding and innovating.

Category Archives: Hyper-V