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European Windows 2012 Hosting - France :: Look Further Windows 2012 Powershell 3.0

clock September 24, 2013 08:34 by author Scott

Now that Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012 is available, the same is true for Windows PowerShell 3.0 since it is included in the operating system. Windows PowerShell will also be available for down level operating systems (Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2) shortly, as part of the Windows Management Framework (WMF). In addition to PowerShell, new versions of Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) and Windows Remote Management (WinRM) is included in the WMF.

What is new?

PowerShell 2.0 brought a whole set of new features including background jobs, remoting and the PowerShell ISE. In PowerShell 3.0 there have been made a great number to these features as well as many new ones. I will go through some of the major news:

Workflows – Based on the Windows Workflow Foundation the PowerShell team have brought workflows into PowerShell. A workflow is a sequence of automated steps or so called activities which performs tasks or receives data from managed devices. This makes it possible for IT Professionals to perform automated tasks against a wide variety of devices, for example software installation. A practical example is the installation and configuration of a Windows Server Failover Cluster, where installation and configuration can be orchestrated from a workflow. Among the feature set of a workflow is the ability to suspend and resume execution, no matter if the reason is planned or a temporary network outage. You can see examples and read more about this feature in this article on the PowerShell team blog.

Enhancements to PowerShell Remoting - Robust sessions is a new feature in PowerShell Remoting which makes it possible for a PowerShell Remoting session, a so-called “PSSession”, to survive a temporary network outage. Delegated administration is another new feature in remoting, where a RunAsAccount can be configured on a remoting endpoint. This makes it possible to delegate tasks to for example helpdesk user, without needing to delegate tasks on the backbone application itself.

Simplified syntax – Especially for beginners, the syntax for various parts of PowerShell might be hard to remember and understand. An example of this is the syntax for the –FilterScript parameter of Where-Object and the –Process parameter of Foreach-Object, which both accepts a so-called script block. In version 1.0 and 2.0 of PowerShell we had to use the $_.propertyname syntax inside this scriptblock. For example Get-Service | Where-Object {$_.Status –eq ‘Running’}. In version 3.0, this still works, but there is an alternate more user friendly syntax as well: Get-Service | Where-Object Status –eq ‘Running’. Here we can see that we did not have to use the curly brackets or the $_. syntax. You should note that you have to use the existing syntax if you are doing more than one comparison, however, this makes it much easier for beginners who are likely to do a single comparison in the beginning. Also experienced users will enjoy this feature since it requires less typing.

More user friendly – A lot of enhancements have been made to make PowerShell more user friendly. A common mistake for new users is not loading the required module for the cmdlet they want to run. For example, if you run Get-ADUser without first running Import-Module ActiveDirectory, you would get an error message stating that Get-ADUser is not recognized. In PowerShell 3.0 there is a new feature called module autoloading, which automatically loads the required module for the cmdlet which is being run. Another features in terms of user friendliness is the new cmdlet Show-Command, as well as the Intellisense feature in PowerShell ISE. You can read more about these two features in this and this article on the PowerShell team blog.

Windows PowerShell Web Service – makes it possible to expose a set of PowerShell cmdlets as a Restful Endpoint via OData (Open Data Protocol). This makes it possible to run PowerShell cmdlets from both Windows and non-Windows devices. Note that this feature is more targeted against advanced users and developers.

Windows PowerShell Web Access – If you have used Microsoft Exchange Server`s webmail functionality, OWA, this feature will look familiar. The sign in page for PowerShell Web Access looks very similar to the OWA sign in page. When logged in, you will be presented with a PowerShell session. This makes it easy to use PowerShell both from a web browser on your computer as well as from mobile devices such as an Iphone or Windows Phone. Note that this feature requires Windows Server 2012. You can find instructions on how to configure this feature in this article on Microsoft TechNet.

Updateable help – Until PowerShell 3.0 the help files that is parsed when you are using the Get-Help cmdlet has been a part of the installation. Updating these files have not been possible, since rolling out help files through the channels for updating the operatingsystem (Windows Update, WSUS) could not be justified. Due to this reason, it was not possible for the PowerShell team to correct errors and enhance the help files after the product had shipped. To overcome this limitation, a new feature named updateable help has been added in version 3.0. There is a new cmdlet called Update-Help you can execute in order to update the help files. If you need to download the files in order to bring them over to a computer not connected to the internet you can use the Save-Help cmdlet. You can read more about updateable help in this article by PowerShell MVP Don Jones.

Microsoft Script Explorer – Technically this is not a part of PowerShell 3.0, but rather a standalone download released in the same timeframe as PowerShell 3.0. Using Script Explorer you can search for scripts and other resources on both Microsoft TechNet as well as 3rd party repositories and local UNC-paths, for example a company repository. Script Explorer can either be run as a standalone application or integrated into the PowerShell ISE as an add-on. By integrating it to the ISE you can copy scripts you find directly in to the editor. Script Explorer will also support Windows PowerShell 2.0.

In addition to the above mentioned features, there has been made a great number of bug fixes and enhancements based on feedback from Microsoft Connect.



European Windows 2012 Hosting - Amsterdam :: Clustered Shared Volumes (2.0) in Windows Server 2012

clock August 5, 2013 12:09 by author Scott

Clustered Shared Volumes was first introduced in Windows Server 2008 R2, and was almost as popular as sliced bread by the time. A great enhancement, and it was solely meant for Hyper-V virtual machines.

Instead of using a dedicated LUN for each VM (so that you could migrate them between cluster nodes without taking down the other VMs on the same LUN) as in Windows Server 2008, you had now the possibility to store multiple VMs on the same LUN by converting it to CSV.

CSV is a distributed file access solution that let multiple nodes in a cluster to access the same file system simultaneously.

This means that many VMs can share the same volume, while you can failover, live migrate and move VMs without affecting the other virtual machines. This leads to better utilization of your storage since you don’t have to place VMs on separate disks, and the CSV’s are not depending in disk letters so you can scale this configuration out, if you’d like.

What’s the latest and greatest related to CSV 2.0:

- Windows Server 2012 has brought some changes to the architecture, so there’s now a new NTFS compatible file system, which is called CSVFS. This means that applications running on a CSV are able to discover this, and leverage this. But still, the underlying file system is NTFS.

- BitLocker Support is added to the list, which means you can secure your CSVs on a remote location. The Cluster Name Object is used as the identity to decryption and you should include this in every cluster deployment you are doing, because the performance penalty are less than 1%.

- Direct I/O for data access which gives enhancements for virtual machine creation and copy operations.

- Support for other roles than Virtual Machines. There’s an entirely new story around SMB in Windows Server 2012, and CSV is also affected by this. You can now put a SMB file share on top of your CSVs, which makes it easier to scale out your cluster storage, to share a single CSV among several clusters, where they will access their shares instead of volumes. Just a reminder: You can run Hyper-V virtual machines from a SMB file share in Windows Server 2012. This requires that both the server and the client is using SMB 3.0.

- The marriage to Active Directory has come to an end. External authentication dependencies, which you would run into if you started your cluster without an available AD is now removed. This gives us an easier setup of clusters, with less trouble and dependencies.

- File backup by supporting requestors that’s running Windows Server 2008 R2 or 2012. You can use application consistent and crash consistent VSS snapshots.

- SMB support with multichannel and direct. CSV traffic can now stream across multiple networks in the clusters and utilize the performance in your NICs that supports RDMA.

- Integration with storage spaces (new in Windows Server 2012) so that you can leverage your cheap disks (just a bunch of disks, JBOD) in a cluster environment

- Maintenance by scanning and repairing volumes with no downtime

Although there’s several enhancement for VM mobility in 2012, where you can move VMs without shared storage, there are still significant benefits by clustering your Hyper-V hosts.

 



European Windows 2012 Hosting - Amsterdam :: Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V Replica

clock July 29, 2013 07:30 by author Scott

For small businesses, there’s often no easy answer when it comes to disaster recovery. With many storage and DR options out of reach, finding an affordable way to protect data can be challenging. But in Hyper-V Replica, Microsoft offers a new path to DR for many SMBs.

Usage Scenarios

Hyper-V Replica, one of many operational and performance improvements to Hyper-V in Windows Server 2012, allows users to replicate virtual machines over slow, unreliable network links. Replica is purely a DR solution and doesn’t replace clustering, but it can be used to replicate clusters of Hyper-V servers.

With Replica, SMBs can set up a DR site at a branch office (or at a remote site hosted by a service provider) and use Hyper-V to replicate the contents of selected VMs at 5-minute intervals.

Unlike most enterprise-grade replication technologies, Hyper-V Replica does not require a reliable, high-bandwidth network link between primary and DR sites. It’s designed to work with links that don’t run over dedicated lines, such as broadband or asymmetric digital subscriber line (ADSL) technologies, which may be subject to short outages.

The Replication Process

To begin, Hyper-V Replica creates an initial copy of the primary server. That file is then copied over, either manually or over the network, to the Replica server at the recovery site. Replica then writes to a log file (Hyper-V Replica Log, or HRL) on the primary server every time there’s a write operation. This HRL file is replicated on the Replica server and is replayed every 5 minutes, in reverse, replicating only changes made since the last replay.

Due to the 5-minute replication frequency, if the primary server goes offline, up to 10 minutes of data might be lost. If Hyper-V can’t replicate at the 5-minute interval, an alert is written to the event log. If replication fails for more than 30 minutes, the Replica server is put into a failed state and replication must be manually restarted — so it’s possible that an hour of data could be lost at the DR site.

The replication schedule is designed to keep the state of the operating system consistent after a failover to the Replica server. If it’s critical that applications remain consistent, Hyper-V Replica can be set to create additional Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) recovery points for this purpose.

Ensuring Security with Hyper-V Replica

Before implementing Hyper-V Replica, Windows Firewall must be configured to allow the necessary replication traffic to pass through. This applies as well to any other firewalls that separate the corporate intranet from the DR site. Replica comes with default Windows Firewall rules, but they must be enabled manually in the Windows Firewall with Advanced Security management console. There are two inbound rules:

  1. Hyper-V Replica HTTP Listener (TCP-In)
  2. Hyper-V Replica HTTPS Listener (TCP-In)


The HTTPS rule is needed only if certificate-based authentication is used. Hyper-V in Windows Server 2012 also includes a new simple authorization model in which a Hyper-V Administrators group is created on each server that hosts the Hyper-V role. Hyper-V Administrators can configure Replica servers to accept incoming connections from specific Hyper-V servers.

There are two different types of authentication that Hyper-V Replica uses. Kerberos, a network authentication protocol, is the default option, but certificate-based authentication allows replication between primary and Replica servers to be encrypted.

Integrated authentication uses the Kerberos protocol and can be established between trusted Active Directory domains. In the absence of Active Directory, X.509v3 certificates can be used instead of Kerberos. Replication Authorization Tags protect Replica VMs residing on a single server in a data center, which is useful for hosting service providers that need to stop clients from gaining access to Replica VMs other than their own.

Installing Hyper-V Replica

Replica works in both workgroup and domain scenarios, and Replica servers don’t need to be in the same AD domain as primary servers. The first step is to configure a Replica server in a branch office by adding the Hyper-V role. This is done either with Server Manager or by using PowerShell. Once the role is installed, the server must be restarted. The following PowerShell command will install the Hyper-V role and management tools:

Install-WindowsFeature -Name Hyper-V –IncludeManagementTools

Now open Hyper-V Settings in the Actions pane of Hyper-V Manager, click on Replication Configuration and select Enable this computer as a replica server in the Details pane. Choose an authentication method, and don’t forget to enable the default Windows firewall rules. In the Authorization and storage section, the system can be set to allow replication from any authenticated server or from a specific list of servers.

VMs in the primary site can be enabled for replication with a simple wizard. In Hyper-V Manager, select a VM in the Details pane, right-click the VM and choose Enable Replication. The wizard allows a choice in how to perform the initial replication, which by default happens over the network. That may not be feasible or desirable over a slow network, so there’s also the option to perform the first replication using external media and then import the data at the Replica site.

Failover

Hyper-V has a new section in the configuration option for each VM called Failover TCP/IP, where both alternative IPv4 and IPv6 addresses can be provided should the DR site have a completely different IP addressing scheme than the primary site. These addresses are used when a failover action is performed.

There are three kinds of failover:

  • Test Failover
  • Planned Failover
  • Unplanned Failover

A Test Failover allows Hyper-V administrators to perform a failover without disrupting the primary server.

A Planned Failover should involve no data loss; the primary server will temporarily become the Replica server for the VM that has failed over. The VM on the primary server needs to be shut down beforehand, and the primary server must be configured as a Replica server.

An Unplanned Failover is not expected and is initiated from the Replica server at the DR site. A VM on the Replica server will be started from a Replica recovery point. This could result in some data loss.



HostForLIFE.eu now supports Windows Server 2012 Hosting Platform in European Data Center

clock October 1, 2012 07:58 by author Scott

Microsoft has just officially released the highly anticipated Windows Server 2012. The newly released server operating system offers a number of features that can be utilized to benefit developers, resellers and businesses. As a premier European Windows and ASP.NET hosting provider that follow the developments of Microsoft products, HostForLIFE.eu proudly announces the support of Windows Server 2012 Hosting Platform in the world-class Amsterdam (The Netherlands) data center.

“We know that our customers are always looking for new technologies and the latest Microsoft product. With the launch of Windows Server 2012, we believe that anyone can take advantage of all the improvements available in this platform”, said Manager of HostForLIFE.eu, Kevin Joseph. “The focus on high availability, scalability, and virtualization has made this one of the most important releases of Windows Server to date. We have been working closely with Microsoft throughout the pre-release development cycle of the platform to both drive the direction of the product and ensure our team is ready to support Server 2012 solutions. We couldn’t be more excited and confident in the solutions now available to our clients with Windows Server 2012.”


With our Windows Server 2012 Hosting Platform, customers have an access directly to all the newest technologies and frameworks, such as ASP.NET 4.5 Hosting, ASP.NET MVC 4 Hosting, Silverlight 5 Hosting, WebMatrix Hosting, Visual Studio Lightswitch Hosting and SQL 2012 Hosting. All these technologies/frameworks are integrated properly on our world-class Control Panel. The package is offered from just €2.45/month and we believe that this is the most affordable, features-rich Windows and ASP.NET Hosting package in European market.


HostForLIFE.eu is awarded Top No#1 SPOTLIGHT Recommended Hosting Partner by Microsoft (see
http://www.microsoft.com/web/hosting/HostingProvider/Details/953). Our service is ranked the highest top #1 spot in several European countries, such as: Germany, Italy, Netherlands, France, Belgium, United Kingdom, Sweden, Finland, Switzerland and other European countries. Besides this award, we have also won several awards from reputable organizations in the hosting industry and the detail can be found on our official website.

For more information about our service, please visit
http://www.hostforlife.eu.

About HostForLIFE.eu:


HostForLIFE.eu is European Windows Hosting Provider which focuses on Windows Platform only. We deliver on-demand hosting solutions including Shared hosting, Reseller Hosting, Cloud Hosting, Dedicated Servers, and IT as a Service for companies of all sizes.


Our number one goal is constant uptime. Our data center uses cutting edge technology, processes, and equipment. We have one of the best up time reputations in the industry.


Our second goal is providing excellent customer service. Our technical management structure is headed by professionals who have been in the industry since its inception. We have customers from around the globe, spread across every continent. We serve the hosting needs of the business and professional, government and nonprofit, entertainment and personal use market segments.

 



European Windows 2012 Hosting - Amsterdam :: New features in Windows 2012

clock September 11, 2012 10:22 by author Scott

With Windows Server 2012 (formerly “Windows Server 8”) on the horizon and many IT shops mulling upgrades, it’s more likely upgrades to Server 2012 will be incremental rather than all-at-once. It’s likely that those with infrastructure built on top of Windows Server will have both Server 2012 and older versions of Server running side-by-side for some time.

Given that, here are a few answers to common questions in this area how the new and older versions of Windows Server might have coexistence issues.


Can I run Windows Server 2012 systems in a cluster with earlier versions of Windows Server?

The small answer is “no.” There are several reasons for this, not least of which are the major improvements in the way clustering is managed and deployed across servers in Windows Server 2012. The new clustering features aren’t backward-compatible with earlier versions of Windows Server, so clusters can’t be upgraded in a “rolling” fashion; each node in a cluster has to be evicted from the cluster, upgraded to Windows Server 2012 and added to a total new cluster of 2012-only servers.

Here are some of the key new clustering features in Windows Server 2012, which will not be supported by earlier versions of the operating system:

Storage migration
. This allows cluster-managed VMs to be live-migrated to a new place while the VM is up and running, in much the same manner as VMware’s vMotion.

Clustered shared volumes
. This feature is not new to Server 2012 — it was introduced in Windows Server 2008 R2 — but it’s been revised and expanded, and the expanded functionality is not available for previous versions of Server. Multiple nodes in the same cluster can share the same file system, which allows a VM hosted on any node in that cluster to be migrated to any other node on that cluster.

Cluster-aware updating (CAU)
. Updates to machines in a Windows Server 2012 cluster can be applied automatically in a rolling fashion. This way, the total cluster remains online during the process. Plugins that talk to an API expand CAU’s behavior.

There are many other new features, but to use them uniformly across a cluster requires a cluster-wide upgrade to Windows Server 2012.


What do I need to know in this area using file shares between Windows Server 2012 and earlier versions of Windows Server?

Windows Server 2012 uses the new SMB 3.0 protocol (originally SMB 2.2) for establishing file shares between Windows systems.


SMB 3.0 clients will always attempt to negotiate the highest possible level of the protocol with any peer it connects with, so if you establish a share between Windows Server 2012 and earlier versions of Windows Server, the connection will be negotiated according to whatever level of SMB is available on the other server. Microsoft TechNet blogger Jose Barreto has a post with a chart that spells out the highest grade of SMB available to a connection negotiated between any two editions of Windows.

SMB 3.0′s new features are only available to other Windows Server 2012 or Windows 8 systems. Some of the new features include:

Scale-out
. The same folder can be shared from multiple nodes in a cluster for the sake of failover, surpass use of bandwidth, dynamic capacity scaling, load balancing and fault tolerance.

Multichannel help
. Any multiple, redundant network associations between SMB peers can be used to accelerate the connection.

End-to-end encryption
. Data sent between SMB 3.0 peers is encrypted by default.

VSS help
. SMB shares are now covered by volume shadow copies as well, so data on file shares can also be backed up and restored owing to any VSS-aware software.

SMB Direct
. Servers that use RDMA-capable network adapters can delight in high-speed memory-to-memory data transfers with far less CPU usage and latency than conventional copy operations.

SMB index leasing
. This feature reduces latency for documents accessed via the Branch Cache feature, by locally caching more of the metadata associated with the document and reducing the amount of roundtrips to the original server.

Note that if you have a mixed infrastructure where all the clients and servers use SMB 2 or surpass — Windows Vista on the client side, Windows Server 2008 on the server side — disable the use of SMB 1.x with the PowerShell command Set-SmbServerConfiguration –EnableSMB1Protocol $fake. Disabling SMB 1.x reduces the potential attack surface for the server. If the protocol isn’t in use, it’s best to disable it to preclude a possible future exploit from being used on it.

What Windows Server features are being deprecated in Windows Server 2012?

Some features in Windows Server are no longer supported as of Windows Server 2012, or are in the process of being removed. Most of these deprecations only occupy code or applications that run directly on the new OS, rather than interoperations with other editions. That said, there are exceptions especially if, for instance, you have an older application that expects the same behavior when it tries to interoperate with the newer version of Server.

Here’s a list of some of the major deprecations and feature removals in Windows Server 2012 (with more listed at TechNet), which may impact cross-server compatibility or applications running on other servers:

Clustering
. 32-bit cluster resource DLLs are being deprecated and must be replaced with their 64-bit counterparts whenever possible. Also, if you have any programs that use the Cluster Automation Server (MSClus) COM API, be aware that this API is now only available via an optional component named FailoverCluster-AutomationServer, which isn’t installed by default.

Databases
. 16- and 32-bit ODBC help has been removed, as have ODBC and OLEDB drivers for Oracle and Jet Red databases. (Use vendor-supplied database connectors.) ODBC/OLEDB help is also being canned for any versions of SQL Server beyond 2000; for those editions of SQL Server and higher, use SQL Native Client instead. Finally, no version of SQL Server earlier than 7.0 is supported at all. It’s unlikely that anyone is still running SQL Server 6.5 or earlier, but any attempts to connect to a SQL Server 6.5 (or earlier) instance from Windows Server 2012 will breed an error.

Committed Index
. Help for resource groups and using Committed Index Lightweight Index Services as an certification store have been deprecated.

UNIX
. Many UNIX subsystem features are being deprecated or removed. Microsoft entire SUA POSIX subsystem is being deprecated, along with the line printer daemon protocol that is often used by UNIX clients. As a general replacement for Microsoft’s UNIX features consider using the Cygwin or MinGW, open source tools and APIs that are maintained entirely apart from Windows’s own evolution.

WMI
. Many individual WMI providers are being removed or deprecated: SNMP (because SNMP itself is deprecated); the WMI provider for Committed Index (eclipsed by PowerShell), and the Win32_ServerFeature API.

Finally, the Windows Help application (winhlp32.exe) has also been removed although it has not shipped with Windows Server since Windows Server 2008. What’s more, no add-on version of the Windows Help program is being supplied owing to Microsoft as a download, as it did with previous versions of Windows that mislaid Windows Help. (Even if, a Windows Help journal for the client journal of Windows 8 will be made available later, which must do the job.)

 



About HostForLIFE.eu

HostForLIFE.eu is European Windows Hosting Provider which focuses on Windows Platform only. We deliver on-demand hosting solutions including Shared hosting, Reseller Hosting, Cloud Hosting, Dedicated Servers, and IT as a Service for companies of all sizes.

We have offered the latest Windows 2016 Hosting, ASP.NET Core 2.2.1 Hosting, ASP.NET MVC 6 Hosting and SQL 2017 Hosting.


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