Starting tomorrow, Dell and SUSE will host a series of four webinars (click here to register) on the Dell SUSE Cloud Solution: an end-to-end OpenStack-based private cloud solution, including SUSE Cloud 2.0, a validated and certified Reference Architecture based on PowerEdge server systems and Force10 networking infrastructure, services, support and more.

September 26^th– 11:00-12:00 EST
Week 1: Introduction to OpenStack and the Dell SUSE Cloud Solution

This webcast will provide an overview of the OpenStack project, its technical architecture, and how Dell and SUSE are working together to enable organizations to rapidly deploy enterprise-ready private clouds based on OpenStack.

Our presenters will be Pete Chadwick from SUSE and Kamesh Pemmaraju from Dell.

Pete is senior product manager of Cloud Infrastructure solutions for SUSE. At SUSE, his responsibilities include comprehensive market and business analysis required to deliver go-to-market strategies for one of SUSE’s priority business areas – cloud.

Kamesh is a Senior Product Manager for Cloud Solutions at Dell with specific focus on the Dell OpenStack-Powered Cloud Solution. He owns product management responsibilities for the Dell OpenStack solution and is a subject matter expert on the cloud market and technologies.

Click here to register

If you have any questions, feel free to contact us:

Rafael Knuth (Dell)
rafael_knuth@dellteam.com
@RafaelKnuth

P.S. In the event that you are unable to attend a webinar, note that all the webcasts will be recorded for future replay, but please register so that we can make sure to send you the link! 

The following blog post is from Didier Van Hoye, a Technical Architect, Dell TechCenter Rockstar and avid blogger.

I love it when a plan comes together.

We adopted Windows 2012 when right after it went RTM in august 2012. Today we’re are already running Windows 2012 R2 and ready to step up the pace. If you are a VAR/ISV that does not have fast & good support for Windows Server 2012 R2, consider this your notice. You can’t lead from behind.

As it turns out, we’re pretty well off with the DELL hardware stack. The Dell PowerEdge generation 11 and 12 servers are supported by DELL and on the Windows Server Catalog for Windows Server 2012 R2.

For more information on Dell Server inbox driver support see: Windows Server 2012 R2 RTM Inbox Driver Support on Dell PowerEdge Servers. Please check if your particular hardware is supported before you jump in. By the way I can testify that we’ve run Windows Sever 2012 R2 successfully on 9th Generation hardware (PowerEdge 1950/2950).

We’ve been running tests since Windows 2012 R2 Preview on R710/R720 and it has been a blast. We’ve kept them up to date with the latest firmware & drives via SUU. And for our Intel X520 and Mellanox ConnectX-3 we’ve had rapid support as well.

So what more could you want? Well support from your storage array vendor I would think. I’m happy to report that Storage Center 6.4 has been out since October 8th and it supports Windows Server 2012 R2. Dell Compellent adds MLC SSD Tier – Bests 15K HDDs on Price and Performance. Mind you on a lazy Sunday afternoon 2 quick e-mails to CoPilot got me the answer that Storage Center 6.3.10 also supports Windows Server 2012 R2. Sweet!

And that’s not just DELL, the Dell Compellent Storage Center 6.4 is fully Windows Server 2012 R2 logo certified! That’s what you want to see from you vendor, fast & excellent support.

Here’s the entire DELL hardware line up with Windows Server 2012 R2 support. Happy upgrading & implementation! If you have Software Assurance you’re set to reap the benefits of that investment today!

To my all employers / clients, you see now, told you so. I love it when a plan comes together.

I know some of you think that all the testing, breaking, wrecking of Preview bits, RTM & GA versions we do looks like chaos, especially when you visually add the test server & switch configurations. But that’s what it looks like to YOU. To the initiated this is well executed plan, dropping all assumptions, to establish what works & will hold up. The result is that we’re ready today and by extension, so are you.

The Dell Quickstart Data Warehouse Appliance is an all-in-one solution built to help our customers gain rapid insight from their data and speeds decision making. For more information about how you can get the most from what Dell has to offer visit the main page at www.software.dell.com/QDW.

The Quickstart team has recently produced a series of videos highlighting just how easy it is to get up and running with the appliance.

• Video 1 - Covers the initial setup of the appliance, from unboxing the system to initial data load.  www.software.dell.com/QDW1
• Video 2 - Showcases Dell Boomi and how it can be used to extract and load data into the data warehouse. www.software.dell.com/QDW2
• Video 3 - The final video in the series show how you can leverage the Dell Toad Business Intelligence suite to discover and visualize data. www.software.dell.com/QDW3

For more information on Dell Boomi go to their main page at www.boomi.com

For information about the Dell Toad Business Intelligence Suite follow this link or for more information about the many products that Dell Toad has to offer go to www.toadworld.com

"The Elway Gazette"

Hi Community, here is my compilation of the most interesting technical blog posts written by members of the Microsoft MVP Community. The number of MVPs is growing well, I hope you enjoy their posts. @all MVPs If you'd like me to add your blog posts to my weekly compilation, please send me an email (flo@datacenter-flo.de) or reach out to me via Twitter (@FloKlaffenbach). Thanks!

Featured Posts of the Week!

OpenStack Windows Server 2012 R2 Evaluation by Alessandro Pilotti

How to create Windows OpenStack images by Alessandro Pilotti

Enabling Jumbo Frames Inside Virtual Machines Enhances Throughput & Reduces CPU Load by Didier van Hoye

Ethernet Resource Pool in Hyper-V by Susantha Silva

Azure 

Windows Azure Pack Framework Explained by Damian Flynn

Windows Azure November Neuerungen in German by Toni Pohl

Chargeback and Billing:- Integrate Cloud Cruiser Express with Windows Azure Pack (WAP) by Lai Yoong Seng

BackupChain Review : Restore Windows Server 2012 R2 Hyper-V Using BackupChain by Lai Yoong Seng

Windows Azure Active Directory–Authentifizierung “nur Code” & erste Schritte mit der Graph API in German by Robert Mühsig

Exchange

Review: Microsoft Exchange Server 2013 Inside Out: Mailbox and High Availability by Johan Veldhuis

Hyper-V

Designing a Non-Clustered Hyper-V Host by Aidan Finn

OpenStack Windows Server 2012 R2 Evaluation by Alessandro Pilotti

How to create Windows OpenStack images by Alessandro Pilotti

Enabling Jumbo Frames Inside Virtual Machines Enhances Throughput & Reduces CPU Load by Didier van Hoye

Use Cross-Version Live Migration to Upgrade to Windows Server 2012 R2 Hyper-V y Aidan Finn

Ethernet Resource Pool in Hyper-V by Susantha Silva

PowerShell

Execution Policy in PowerShell Tools for Visual Studio by Adam Driscoll

PowerTips Monthly: PowerShell Reference Library by Shay Levy

#PSTip How to combine trace log entries from all SharePoint farm servers using PowerShell by Shay Levy

POWERSHELL – GET FILE HASH by Thomas Maurer

More PowerShell Trace Window Fun by Jeffery Hicks

Turn On PowerShell Help Window by Jeffery Hicks

PowerShell function to report users in domain local groups by Jeff Wouters

Sharepoint  

[MicrosoftCloudShow] Episode 5 is live - SharePoint Deployment Options - On Premises vs. Hosted by Andrew Connell

RESOLVED: SharePoint Workflow Designer Fails to Load in Visual Studio 2013 by Andrew Connell

System Center Core

Double-Take Move Partners With Microsoft For Easy Migration From VMware To Hyper-V Via System Center by Aidan Finn

System Center Configuration Manager

Applying Cumulative Updates for System Center Configuration Manager 2012 SP1 by Damian Flynn

System Center Virtual Machine Manager

XenDesktop Service Template for SCVMM 2012 R2 by Kristian Nese

Windows Server 2012 R2 NVGRE Gateway mit NAT in SC2012 R2 VMM in German by Daniel NeumannSC2012 R2 VMM Storage Management – iSCSI in German by Daniel Neumann

Windows Intune

Windows Intune “Wave F” by Aidan Finn

Windows Server

IIS und Web Teil 1–Neuerungen und Installation von IIS 8.5 in German by Martina Grom

IIS und Web Teil 2-Verbessertes Logging in IIS 8.5 in German by Martina Grom

IIS und Web Teil 3-Verbesserte Performance mit IIS 8.5 in German by Martina Grom

IIS und Web Teil 4-Web-Performance testen in German by Martina Grom

When we first introduced Project Sputnik, the client-to-cloud solution for developers, over a year ago we talked about two community projects: the profile tool and the cloud launcher.  We garnered a fair amount of attention and made some progress but unfortunately not as much as I would have liked.  I am very happy to report therefore that recently we have put together an intrepid group of developers and architects within Dell to pick up the profile tool charge.  

While we’ve had a few false starts in the past, besides the addition of committed Dell resources, there are a couple of other things that set this time apart: 1) we are starting from an internal use case and 2) we are working with and leveraging some of the work of Docker.  

And just like when project Sputnik originally kicked off, we want to get your input and feedback on the Profile Tool and its direction.  Check out my blog for the specifics of what we are looking for.

Please join our third and last session in our series on OpenStack Networking with VMware. In case you weren’t able to attend the first two theory sessions, please find below the recordings. You can register for the upcoming hands-on labs at Meetup.com. We will host that session both online via IRC and Google+ Hangout as well as physically in Budapest.

Interview with the presenter: Yves Fauser, System Engineer at VMware

Q: Can you give us a brief overview over the OpenStack Networking sessions?
A: In the 3 OpenStack Networking sessions we try to lay some foundational understanding of how network connectivity is provided to Instances in OpenStack. In the first session we give a general Overview of OpenStack Networking, and what the key drivers were to move networking from Nova into the Neutron project. We also speak about network virtualization in contrast to traditional networking, and talk about the general concepts of Neutron. In Session 2 we go much deeper, and we speak about the implementation details of Nova-networking and the Neutron OVS Plugin, as well as of the VMware NSX (aka as Nicira NVP) plugin. In the final Session 3 we will have a mixed on-site (Budapest) and remote session. Those participants who are able to attend on-site will have access to an OpenStack environment with OpenStack Neutron and with the OVS Plugin pre-installed. We will go over the steps how networking is configured and how to view the results of the configurations.

Q: Who is your target audience?
A: The target audience are OpenStack savvy engineers, who want to get a better understanding of OpenStack Networking.

Q: What prerequisites do participants have to meet?
A: A base knowledge of OpenStack, its projects and concepts is required. Beside this we don't require networking knowledge of the participants.

Q: Can you tell us what VMware is offering arund OpenStack Networking?
A: VMware offers a solution to networking in OpenStack using programatic overlays - so network virtualization - with its NSX product line. VMware was a key contributor to the OpenStack Neutron project, and VMware NSX is used in production in some of the largest OpenStack production deployments today.

Recorded Sessions: Theory 1 & 2

(Please visit the site to view this video)

(Please visit the site to view this video)

Register for the 3rd session at Meetup.com

(Please visit the site to view this video)

5.  The user experience is addicting, like chocolate or a good cup of coffee.

• From purchase to customer usage, or while managing the client lifecycle, Dell is making it easy for our customers to do business and be productive.  Users are looking for a simplified set of products and solutions based to meet their needs. Smart Selection allows us to offer this via direct relationships or in easy, hassle-free online shopping experience that also provides for lower cost. Lenovo doesn’t offer this.
  
• The Latitude 5000 provides the best balance of performance, feature sets and mobility features users want, at a price that beats out the competition.
• You can never be too thin or too rich – yet the Latitude 5000 is exactly that: thinner and lighter than the previous models, and richer in features and performance.
• A positive end user experience is an intuitive user experience. Wireless capabilities make connectivity automatic and seamless, and the Latitude 5000 offers the longest battery life – up to 23 hours with a 9 cell internal battery – so users don’t have to worry about working on the go.  Touch screen capabilities with Win7 and Win 8 to further enhance a modern user experience

4.  Because the Latitude 5000 is Dell’s new business mainstream laptop.

• Dell is transitioning to a 3000, 5000, and 7000 series nomenclature.  Dell Latitude 5000 series represents our mainstream product line, offering a balanced investment in mobility and productivity features that beats out the Latitude 6000 series.
• Latitude 5000 series uses highly durable plastics in its construction making it lighter than the Latitude 6000 series products
• Dell continues to innovate and is first to market with several technologies, including touchscreens in commercial notebooks and wireless docking (WiGig). Latitude has also been a leader in emerging features such as mobile broadband, high resolution panels, and unique/use case design platforms.

3.  The security features on the Dell Latitude 5000 series.

• Only Dell offers best-in-class endpoint security solutions, including comprehensive encryption, advanced authentication, and leading-edge malware prevention. Unlike our competitors, these solutions are all available factory-installed for automatic deployment and provisioning.
• Dell Data Protection | Encryption protects data on any device, external media, and in the cloud. It can be centrally managed and won’t disrupt IT processes or end user productivity.
• A one-year subscription to DDP | Protected Workspace is included on every Dell Latitude 5000 Series laptop to stop even the most advanced malware attacks in its tracks.
• DDP | Security Tools, also included on every Dell Latitude, enables advanced authentication such as the Latitude 5000 Series’ fully-integrated fingerprint reader and FIPS 201-compliant smart card reader.
• The Dell Latitude 5000 series also offers FIPS 140-2 Certified TPM and FIPS Certified self-encrypting drives (SEDs) available post-launch.

2.  Help customers get the job done with the right ecosystem.

Customers need more than ‘just the box’.   Dell provides a complete selection of recommended accessories with single-source availability, backed by Dell’s outstanding services and support. 

To get the most out of their Latitude 5000 series recommend the following accessories for in the office and on the go:

• Dell E-Port Replicator
• Dell Wireless Keyboard and Mouse – KM632
• Dell 24 Monitor – P2414
• Dell Professional Slip Case or Professional Business Case
• Dell Mobile Projector – M115

1. The Latitude 5000 series provides a top performing business laptop.

• Dell Latitude provides the most secure, most manageable, most reliable laptop among the competition.  The Dell Latitude 5000 has been redesigned to provide the performance and mobility that equal more productivity.  These features include:
• Higher Productivity/Performance

–        4^th gen Core  I3 to I7 CPU & AMT 9.X
–        DDR3L memory
–        Up to 2GB Discrete Graphics option for E5X40
–        Hybrid HDD option added
–        WiGig Wireless Dock for the Latitude 5000 Series
–        Touch options

• Better Connectivity & Mobility

–        WiGig added to Latitude 5000 Series (available post-launch)
–        New power adapter
–        Intel 7260 AC WLAN
–        3G outside of US/Can
–        4G LTE post-RTS in US/Can

Project Sputnik has sought to prove the viability of offering to developers a highly-portable, factory-installed-Linux laptop that is fully supported by Dell. As a contributor to the project, I know that while energy has been focused on the XPS 13, there has been a lot of interest from the community for a larger, more powerful version as well. When I saw the Precision M3800, the Linux enthusiast in me was excited about trying to run Linux on one. My day job is as a software engineer here at Dell working with Linux and PowerEdge, but I have the good fortune of sometimes being able to get my hands on the latest laptops--even if only as short-term loaners. :)

Dell currently factory-preloads Linux--whether Ubuntu or RHEL--on most of ourbusiness-oriented laptops, such as the 15" Precision Mobile M4800 or the 17" Precision Mobile M6800 and the several Latitudes we offer.(We also offer Ubuntu in select countries on our consumer-oriented Inspiron line.) I've looked at those, and while the Precision Mobile M4800 and M6800 offer plenty of power--and in fact many of the Dell Crowbar developers develop and run test clouds on them--something lighter appeals to me, especially after having personally owned an XPS 13 for the past year and a half.

Having been a "full-time" Linux user since the late 90's, I understand that, while having a system pre-loaded with Linux has many benefits, that's not going to stop early adopters from going ahead and wiping out Windows--in my case I never even boot into it--and installing their favorite Linux distribution. I put "full-time" in scare quotes because I owned a "TiBook" for a few years, originally intending to run Linux on it and ending up running MacOS X on that laptop for a couple years until the wireless card was supported in Linux. I never was fond of the closed nature of OS X nor with the extremely limited Unix experience it offered despite the OS's Unix heritage. Experiences like that helped me appreciate the effort people at companies like Dell have put into Linux and open source, and since owning that TiBook, I've stuck to hardware with better Linux support.

So, while none of this should be construed as official Linux or Ubuntu support on the M3800, or likewise the consumer-orientedXPS 15, in the hope of helping others like me, I have put together a list of what does and does not work well with Ubuntu on the M3800 as well as the XPS 15. I know not everyone uses Ubuntu--personally I mainly use both Debian and Ubuntu--but know that it has the widest audience. 

Here's a rundown of my findings:

For the most part, everything I tested works. This is thanks to Dell's work with Canonical and hardware component makers to ensure hardware support for the other Precision mobile systems and for the XPS 13 DE.

Since these are Haswell systems, if you're running Ubuntu, you'll want to run Ubuntu 13.10--at least until Ubuntu 12.04.4 is released in January. Ubuntu12.04.3 and 13.04 don't have support for the Haswell Intel Wireless chipset in these systems. Depending on which configuration you have, you may need to specify the nomodeset boot option if you're going with Ubuntu 12.04.3 or 13.04.

Running in legacy BIOS mode or in UEFI mode both work, but for now you'll need to enable "Legacy Option ROM" in the BIOS if you're running in UEFI mode because of the display's backlight. This is because of an issue with the Intel i915 driver that currently affects several systems from many vendors. If you don't enable this BIOS option, the backlight will be stuck at the lowest setting in Linux.

On Ubuntu 13.10, I found that both Nouveau and NVIDIA's proprietary driver worked fine, though like with Linux on any system with both NVIDIA discrete and integrated Intel graphics, you probably want to give bumblebee a try to improve your battery life. I briefly tried nvidia-prime, but battery life was suboptimal since nvidia-prime keeps the discrete graphics always on. On an XPS 15 configured with only Intel graphics, this paragraph doesn't apply to you.

The Synaptics touchscreen and touchpad both work thanks to the collaboration of Dell, Canonical and Synaptics for the Haswell version of the XPS 13 DE (a.k.a. Sputnik), which uses Synaptics hardware too. However, for the time being, in order for the touchscreen to be properly detected, an option needs to be passed when loading the usbhid driver. Kent Baxley from Canonical has kindly put together "quirk" packages so all you need to do is install the appropriate one (Quad HD+ or Full HD depending on your display):

        http://linux.dell.com/files/ubuntu/contributions/synaptics-fullhd-touchscreen-quirk_1_all.deb
        http://linux.dell.com/files/ubuntu/contributions/synaptics-quadhd-touchscreen-quirk_1_all.deb

Lastly, the SD card reader on both the M3800 and the XPS 15 does not function properly under Linux, including with the 3.12 kernel. After discussing the bug with my friend Chris Ball, who also maintains the SD/MMC/SDIO subsystem of the Linux kernel, Chris agreed to volunteer time debugging the Linux driver for this card reader. I'd like to thank both Chris for his help and the Precision team for loaning a laptop to Chris. With any luck, I will follow up on this blog post once the SD reader issue is resolved.

Hopefully this post is helpful to anyone buying one of these systems with the goal of running Linux. I'd like to hear from those who buy and run Linux on the M3800 or the XPS 15. Feel free to post here or on the Dell TechCenter forum about your experience.

A World of Solutions with you in the middle … sounds good right.  That is what Dell World 2013 is all about.

What is Dell World you ask?  Dell World 2013 is Dell’s premier gathering of business leaders, CIOs, consultants, IT professionals, and industry analysts to share ideas, insights and best practices for making organizations like yours more successful.  It is two full days of strategy and learning, not only from Dell’s solution experts and partners, but from business and technology leaders from some of the world’s most successful organizations.

One thing that truly sets Dell World apart is the solution showcase, an immersive, hands-on exhibit area that lets you experience smart, efficient, inspiring technology solutions in real-world environments.  This is not your traditional trade show floor… It’s an ideal place to pick up ideas for driving productivity in your organization.

Between the contacts you will make and the knowledge you will gain, Dell World will be one of the most valuable conferences you attend this year. So what are some reasons why you should attend?

1. Opening event with entertainment by Camp Freddy and Friends. 
2. Unprecedented access to some of the brightest minds in business and technology
3. The opportunity to brainstorm our toughest business challenges with peers, as well as our executives and our technology partners
4. Hands-on, business-level demonstrations of technology solutions that can automate your less-strategic but time-consuming work
5. Sessions relevant to challenges you face today like data center convergence, business intelligence, and unified communications
6. Hands-on labs to help you better understand how to execute solutions like server-storage convergence, cloud management, and client systems management
7. Keynotes from Michael Dell and Elon Musk (CEO, Telas and SpaceX)
8. Last but certainly not least, the Dell TechCenter crew will be there to talk technology solutions and community with you.  We will also have the new Intel powered PowerEdge VRTX in our booth so you can come by and get a close hands on look!

I cannot wait to meet and talk with everyone at the event, see you at Dell World 2013 and the Dell TechCenter User Group!!!

For more about Dell World 2013 and Dell Solutions you can always Follow me on Twitter.

Dell World 2013 will take place in Austin, Texas at the Austin Convention Center on Dec. 11-13, 2013.

For additional information and to register, please visit www.DellWorld.com.

Dell Solution Centers in conjunction with Intel have established a Cloud and Big Data program to deliver briefings, workshops and Proofs of Concept focused on hyper-scale programs such as OpenStack and Hadoop.  The program’s Modular Data Center contains over 400 servers to support hyper-scale capability to allow customers to test drive their solutions. 

In this blog series, Cloud Solution Architect Kris Applegate discusses some of the technologies he is exploring as part of this program – and shares some really useful tips! You and your customer can learn more about these solutions at one of our global Solution Centers; all have access to the Modular Data Center capability and we can engage remotely with customers who cannot travel to us.

*******************************************

Big Data is something that is on everyone’s mind. Being able to extract business value from the large volumes of data our modern environments are generating takes a special kind of tool. Hadoop is a Big Data Analytics framework that has been in use for years at many top web properties, research institutes, and Fortune 500 companies. It provides a scalable and affordable method to store and analyze this data. Whether parsing log files at the petabyte scale or offloading work from existing data warehouse applications, Hadoop has a strong foothold in today’s IT world.

 Historically Hadoop has been deployed one of two ways:

1. In Public Clouds: Amazon Web Service’s Elastic Map Reduce offering is a cloud-based pay-as-you-go Hadoop solution. It runs on the same VM infrastructure as Amazon Web Services Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2). These two offerings, when combined form a powerful tool-chain to automate large scale analytics and utilize their output in your other cloud workloads.
2. On Bare-Metal: Dell and a number of other companies have bare-metal hardware-based solutions (both reference architectures and appliances) that can allow customers to setup their own dedicated Hadoop clusters on-premise. These solutions emphasize raw speed and persistent environments. They run Linux on bare-metal PowerEdge servers that are dedicated to the Hadoop role.

However, there is an emerging set of use-cases that would benefit from a virtualized framework over a private Hadoop installation:

1. The need for multiple tenants with distinct boundaries between processing and storage resources. These could be separate projects, separate departments, or even separate business processes (Ad Click-stream analysis versus fraud detection).
2. The need to live inside an existing VMWare-based private cloud. This allows you to share the pool of resources across many different symbiotic workloads. You can use VMWare Resource pools to create and enforce limits for each workload.  Potential symbiotic workloads could include Virtual Desktop Infrastructure, Content Distribution, and High-Performance Clustered Computing.

Using VMware’s new vSphere 5.5 Big Data Extensions you can enable these functions inside of your VMware vSphere environment. It’s as simple as downloading the OVA and importing into your existing environment. By default the basic Apache Foundation distribution of Hadoop is included, but it’s very straight-forward to add in a number of other commercial distributions depending on what you’re level of comfort is.

Once installed, you can begin the creation of your first virtual Hadoop Cluster. You can specify your distribution, your topology (basic, compute/storage separation, HBase-only, and Custom), and the number and size of VMs for each of the Hadoop roles (Name Node, Client, Data Nodes, etc). Keep in mind that the options presented in the web interface are only a fraction of what can be done through the advanced Command-Line tools and API. Whether creating a small persistent Hadoop cluster or a simple one-time cluster that is focused on a singular task, the real value here is the automation and self-service nature that you can empower your users with.

Once you hit OK on the above wizard, the VMware Big Data Extensions will clone the appropriate VMs and begin the completely automated tasks associated with building out the clusters. Once you’re satisfied with the cluster you can even scale up (increase the size of the VM’s memory and CPU resources) or scale out (increase the number of VMs). These options can even be set to be performed automatically as load dictates.

VMware’s Big Data Extensions have successfully lowered the barriers to entry when it comes to harnessing the power of Big Data Analytics. Whether giving Hadoop a test-drive or further enhancing your private cloud’s capabilities, Dell and VMWare are here with a solution.

Times, they are a changing sang Bob Dylan in 1964. Little did he know that one day his lyrics would ring true for traditional IT departments who were seen as the sole provider of resources in the Enterprise. Whether you liked it or not, if you wanted a server for your development team, your company’s IT department would allocate this for you.  The Enterprise has invested heavily in creating tools and processes to provide IT resources to its business units in an efficient and cost effective manner while providing control over who consumes these resources and how.

The advantages of cloud computing (rapid scalability, low barrier to entry, and dynamic pricing) have changed the way users consume IT as a service. Cloud computing provides the agility that businesses need today while shielding them from the complexities of a traditional computing environment: this truly enables businesses to react to the marketplace and leverage IT to achieve their objectives.

The first players in this new era of IT as a service were public cloud providers. As more users decided to use public cloud providers for their computing needs, it resulted in a number of “shadow IT” departments running their own operations in the cloud e.g. a software development group may opt to open an account with Amazon and use it to test their new mobile application while another group may decide to use Microsoft Azure as their cloud provider of choice. Cloud vendors provide easy-to-use tools to consume their services, which makes life easy for end users. However, this method of accessing cloud resources bypasses many of the controls put in place by IT departments for consuming resources onsite. Moreover, IT departments are also implementing in-house private clouds that need to be integrated with internal controls.

The tools and processes that worked seamlessly for in-house services may not apply or scale in this new world of multi-sourced IT as a service. A business may have a system in place that allows it to meter consumed storage in-house and chargeback to different departments, but the same system will break when applied to an assortment of public and private clouds. Similarly, security controls such as Identity management cannot be easily applied to public cloud accounts - who deactivates accounts in the public cloud when an employee leaves the company?

The real challenge that IT departments face today is: How do you bring back control to this new world without re-inventing the wheel of processes and controls and without limiting the benefits of cloud computing?

Dell Multi-Cloud Manager (DMCM) is a cloud management platform that enables aggregation of service interfaces of multiple cloud providers (both public and private) and provides similar level of controls that business leaders as well system administrators are accustomed to with in-house environments. It gives control back to the IT departments, without limiting the choice of cloud providers for its end users.

There are four key areas of cloud management that Dell Multi-Cloud Manager addresses.

1. Access Controls: DMCM allows you to integrate corporate identity management systems with different cloud identity management systems.
2. Governance: Governance allows for judicious use of cloud resources. For example you can allow software developers to create and destroy virtual machines, while restricting operators to only start and stop them.
3. Billing: Using defined chargeback rates and quotas for consumed resources, IT departments can ensure responsible use as well as warn users when they are about to hit their defined quota of resources.  It also allows for tracking of overall costs across all users.
4. Application management: Using industry standard configuration management tools like chef and puppet and well-defined triggers such as CPU usage or even custom application triggers (such as number of active connections to a web server), cloud administrators can easily scale applications depending on demand.

In conclusion, Dell Multi-Cloud Manager provides control over the cloud environment without limiting the choice and agility that businesses demand. To experience the solution, why not avail of a free 2-week trial? Or if you would like to discuss how this solution could work in your environment, why not talk to your account team about scheduling an engagement at one of our 5 US Solution Centers?

"The Elway Gazette"

Hi Community, here is my compilation of the most interesting technical blog posts written by members of the Microsoft MVP Community. The number of MVPs is growing well, I hope you enjoy their posts. @all MVPs If you'd like me to add your blog posts to my weekly compilation, please send me an email (flo@datacenter-flo.de) or reach out to me via Twitter (@FloKlaffenbach). Thanks!

Featured Posts of the Week!

Create Linux VM Template Using VMM 2012 R2 by Lai Yoong Seng

Hotfix: VM Virtual Fibre Channel Loses Access to LUN after Live Migration by Hans Vredevoort

MANAGE WINDOWS AZURE AD USING WINDOWS POWERSHELL by Thomas Maurer 

Windows Azure poster November 2013 edition #WAP #poster by Robert Smit

Azure  

MANAGE WINDOWS AZURE AD USING WINDOWS POWERSHELL by Thomas Maurer

Windows Azure poster November 2013 edition #WAP #poster by Robert Smit

Events

How To Save A Company From Death By Meetings by Didier van Hoye

Hyper-V

Hotfix: VM Virtual Fibre Channel Loses Access to LUN after Live Migration by Hans Vredevoort

Learn About Generation 2 VMs – And How To Convert From Generation 1 by Aidan Finn

FAST AND EASY VMWARE TO HYPER-V MIGRATION by Thomas Maurer

Office 365

Wie Sie Yammer in einem Office 365 Enterprise Plan aktivieren in German by Martina Grom

Office 365–wie Sie als delegierter Administrator die Sitecollections in SharePoint Online aktualisieren in German by Martina Grom

PowerShell

PowerShell function to find groups with no users as members by Jeff Wouters

PowerShell function to list users in Authoritative Groups in Active Directory by Jeff Wouters

PowerShell Clean Up Tools by Jeffery Hicks

#PSTip Ejecting and closing CDROM drive–the PowerShell way! by Ravikanth Chaganti

#PSTip Clear clipboard content by Ravikanth Chaganti

Get PowerShell Version with WMI by Jeffery Hicks

Friday Fun: Theme Me Up! by Jeffery Hicks

How to install Windows PowerShell 4.0 by Jan Egil Ring

System Center Configuration Manager

Distributing Cumulative Update 3 for System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) 2012 SP1 by Damian Flynn

System Center Virtual Machine Manager

Create Linux VM Template Using VMM 2012 R2 by Lai Yoong Seng

How to create a GEN2 VM with SCVMM 2012 R2 by Kristian Nese

SC2012 R2 VMM – Connection String Optionen NVGRE Gateway in German by Daniel Neumann

Windows Client

Windows 8.1: Vollständiges Touch-Keyboard einblenden in German by Nils Kaczenski

Windows Server

Disk Performance counters in Windows Server 2012 R2 Task Manager by Hans Vredevoort

Editor’s Note:

Dell Solution Centers in conjunction with Intel have established a Cloud and Big Data program to deliver briefings, workshops and Proofs of Concept focused on hyper-scale programs such as OpenStack and Hadoop.  The program’s Modular Data Center contains over 400 servers to support hyper-scale capability to allow customers to test drive their solutions. 

In this blog series, Cloud Solution Architect Kris Applegate discusses some of the technologies he is exploring as part of this program – and shares some really useful tips! You and your customer can learn more about these solutions at one of our global Solution Centers; all have access to the Modular Data Center capability and we can engage remotely with customers who cannot travel to us.

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With the tremendous success of virtualization, the need to create larger and larger compute clusters is become necessary. To support this scale, building large elastic pool of servers can provide a great way to scale private clouds up and down as demand dictates. VMWare has provided a toolkit with VMWare vSphere Enterprise Plus called Auto Deploy that assists with just that.

Auto Deploy allows one of two methods to deploy your ESXi Hypervisor:

Stateless– This is where the OS is streamed over PXE / TFTP to each compute node. In this case, you could have little to no storage hardware local to the hypervisor node. You can create a fleet of compute-only nodes that have SAN adapters, Network Adapters, Memory, and CPUs that can provide all the necessary compute services to satisfy the Virtual Machines.

Stateful– This is where you use the same PXE / TFTP mechanism to initially install the ESXi OS to local media (either SD Card or local Disks). Once the installation is done, the Auto Deploy mechanism disengages and local boot of the OS occurs moving forward.

Recently, we had the need to spin up a very large VMware Big Data Extensions cluster of 100 physical nodes. These nodes all had a large amount of physical disks (24 local disks per node) that we wanted to be able to dedicate to Hadoop and not have to use them for local OS data. This became the largest known physical cluster of this type to date.

The high-level process for setting up stateless Auto Deploy is as follows:

1. Install and Setup VMWare vSphere 5.5 Virtualcenter Server (VM or Physical).
2. Install Auto Deploy Server (VM or Physical).
3. Setup PXE and build a “First Boot” profile for the first stateless node.
4. Boot the first node and make sure that it joins the Virtualcenter.
5. Customize the server’s network, datastores, and other configuration parameters that will serve as a template for all other nodes.
6. Create a Host Profile based off this server.
7. Create a new Auto Deploy profile based off this new Host Profile.
8. Boot all your servers and watch as they mimic the configuration of the previous host.

 Rolling out a massive amount of servers in a repeatable and scalable manner is critical for enabling private clouds. 

Blog written by Ted Curtin, Dell.

In September 2001, I was working for a company that sold network bandwidth to Internet Service Providers. Immediately after 9/11, we received numerous inquiries from corporations looking for disaster recovery (DR) solutions. I was surprised when none of these companies moved forward with our carefully crafted proposals. Given all the potential risks, why weren’t they acting to protect their data?

Twelve years later, I have a better understanding of these customers’ reluctance to put a DR plan in place. In addition to the network costs that I was proposing, each customer needed to consider the costs of building a second site, with power and technical support. The second site also needed switching and storage equipment, identical or at least very similar to the primary site. This was a huge and costly undertaking, at any scale.

How things have changed. Today, customers can implement a disaster recovery solution at a fraction of the cost of a 2001 configuration. A new Dell white paper, Rethinking disaster recovery in a virtual worldfocuses on key technologies that enable cost-effective DR, using some Dell products as examples.

Key technologies discussed include:

Blades

Blade servers are an attractive alternative to rack servers in DR configurations even though the upfront cost for blades may be higher. The scale of blade technology justifies the investment, and blades are easy to manage, a significant consideration for sites that may not have dedicated technical personnel.

PowerEdge VRTX

PowerEdge VRTX is a “data center in a box” solution that includes high-performance server nodes, integrated storage, VMware integration, and simplified networking. VRTX is easily managed, doesn’t require special power or cooling, and has a remarkably small footprint.

Did someone mention virtualization?

In the past, many organizations chose to keep large numbers of applications unprotected because of the high cost of protecting physical machines. Virtualization eliminates the need to have a 1:1 server relationship, allowing administrators to economically protect all of their applications.

Storage systems aren’t just for storage

Dell storage solutions are integrated with leading virtualization platforms to help eliminate much of the tedious but critical work needed to facilitate protection and recovery. In the event of an outage, administrators can easily activate recovery for multiple virtual servers from a remote site.

Get thee to an AppAssure demo

Dell AppAssure data protection software provides revolutionary DR capabilities. With WAN-optimized deduplication, AppAssure can reduce bandwidth requirements by 80 percent. AppAssure’s Universal Recovery^™ eliminates the need to restore data and applications to identical machines. Administrators can now perform cross-platform recoveries and bare metal restores to dissimilar hardware.

In an era where threats are omnipresent it’s imperative that organizations have a comprehensive plan for backup and recovery. The Dell whitepaper, Rethinking disaster recovery in a virtual world , is intended to help customers choose the appropriate approach and the best technology for a cost effective disaster recovery plan.

From OMCI Team,

As much to the joy and excitement of supporting various Enterprise Client System (like Dell Precision, Optiplex and Latitude) for generations, the OMCI Team is equally pleased to announce OMCI 8.2.1 extending its support to Venue 11 Pro (5130) tablets.

The other new features and enhancements in OMCI 8.2.1 include:

• Added Support for Windows 8.1 OS;
• Added Support for the following new BIOS options:

• Dell Reliable Memory Technology,
• Dell Wyse P25 Bios Access,
• Pci Mmio Size,
• Pci Allocation Priority,
• Intel Platform Trust Technology,
• Deep Sleep Control.

• Added Support for IO Riser cards

Downloads for OMCI 8.2.1 are available here and the manual are available here.

This blog was written by Kiran Devarapalli and Murugan Sekar from Dell Hypervisor Engineering team. 

VMware ESXi 5.5 has been released and certified on Dell PowerEdge servers. Below we have captured some of the important points with respect to VMware ESXi5.5 Certified Dell Servers.

• Dell has highest number of configurations certified for ESXi5.5 (Server and Feature Certifications). Complete list of VMware certified Dell servers available at VMware HCL.
• Dell PowerEdge 11G and 12G servers are certified to work in both BIOS and UEFI boot mode.
• VM Direct Path IO (FPT) feature is certified and supported only on 11th Generation of Dell Servers. None of the 12G servers are certified for this feature. The existing list of VMware approved Passthrough devices are supported only on 11G Platforms.

List of Passthrough Devices supported from VMware as of today:

• • • Intel 82598 10 Gigabit Ethernet controller 
    • Broadcom 57710 10 Gigabit Ethernet controller
    • Broadcom 57711 10 Gigabit Ethernet controller

List of Dell PowerEdge 11G servers certified for VM Direct Path IO Feature as of today:

   Blade Servers:

• • • • M610, M610X, M710, M710HD, M910, M915

   Rack Servers:

• • • • R910, R810, R710, R610, R510,R410, R815, R715, R515, R415

   Tower Servers:

• • • T710, T610, T410
• Starting from ESXi5.5, VMware has introduced certification for SR-IOV feature. Below Dell servers are certified for SR-IOV and certification of remaining supported servers is currently in progress.
  • M520, R620, R720, R720-XD, T620 
• ESXi5.5 can be installed on HDD or SD Card. For a list of Certified SD cards on Dell Servers, refer to Table-2 in "VMware vSphere 5 on Dell PowerEdge and Storage Systems Compatibility Matrix" guide available at Dell support site.
  
• Dell PowerEdge VRTX is currently supported and certified only with ESXi5.1U1 and not supported with ESXi5.5. Shared PERC Driver, which is required for VRTX is not available for ESXi5.5 yet.

This blog post was originally written by Tino Hernandez and Thomas Cantwell. Send your suggestions or comments to WinServerBlogs@dell.com. To read more technical articles about the OEM release of Windows Server 2012 and Dell, go to the Windows Server 2012 page on Dell TechCenter.

First, how many people know what an OEM operating system (OS) is?   A big misconception is that an OEM OS is exactly the same as a Retail OS, only rebranded with an OEM logo.  This isn’t the case at all; in fact, it’s far from the truth. 

Dell factory-installed OEM OSes are customized, tested, and supported for each server platform so as to provide increased stability and reliability of your Dell server. 

Here are the top 5 reasons why you should buy a Dell OEM OS (which includes a DVD Media Kit).

1. Peripherals and Devices have optimal drivers: OEM Dell factory-installed operating systems include the latest drivers for all devices shipped in the system.  These drivers have been through Dell testing to ensure they are stable and reliable.  In contrast, Retail OS media kits have only “in-box” drivers and sometimes no drivers for various devices.  In some cases, in-box drivers have issues that are fixed via later driver revisions (these are the drivers Dell has factory-installed for the customer).   Dell tests and supports any devices shipped in Dell servers, and the latest drivers are included in the factory-installed OS.
2. Hotfixes are already installed: Dell factory-installs hotfixes that are necessary for proper function, and also, in some instances, to improve system security on first power-up.  Dell reviews security hotfixes and determines if they should be installed (most security hotfixes are not installed, but those required to remove system vulnerabilities on first power up, without user intervention, are installed, and in addition,  the latest Internet Explorer updates are always installed to ensure your browser is as secure as possible when shipped).  Dell’s testing may also result in specific hotfixes for hardware issues or incompatibilities, and those are also installed in a Dell factory OS.  These hotfixes may or may not be listed as “critical” by the vendor.  If they are not critical, then they will not automatically be pushed to your server when running Windows Update.
3. One-stop shop for support: Dell provides Level 1 and 2 support for OEM OSes (with a ProSupport contract).  This means that Dell is your one-stop support provider for both hardware and OS software.
4. Pre-enable Hyper-V virtualization on Windows-equipped servers: When you purchase a Dell factory-installed Windows Server OS, you can opt for the Hyper-V role to be installed and enabled.  Just select “Enabled Virtualization” option and Dell will enable the hypervisor role, and provide a virtual hard drive (VHD) with the same OS image.  This makes deploying a Hyper-V VM easier and quicker.
5. No additional activation necessary: When you purchase a Dell factory-installed OS from Dell, the OS is already activated – no additional validation with Microsoft is required, whereas an OS installed from retail media will usually require either Internet or phone validation to become activated.  This can be especially useful when a server does not have Internet access during setup, as the phone validation mechanism is a manual process that may have to be done for each server deployed.

 Conclusion - A Dell factory-installed OEM OS:

• Costs less than a Retail OS, can be cost-competitive with Volume License OS. 
• Offers latest Dell-tested drivers
• Preinstalls a selection of important security updates and reliability hotfixes
• Is pre-activated
• Can be customized to add the Hyper-V role and a VHD on first startup. 

A Dell factory-installed OEM operating system reduces time to set up at the customer site, enhances security and reliability, and offers a better user experience than a retail OS installation.

This blog post was originally written by Aditi Satam and Syama Poluri. Send your suggestions or comments to WinServerBlogs@dell.com.

The Dell PowerEdge VRTX is a shared infrastructure platform offering outstanding performance and capacity with office-level acoustics in a single, compact tower chassis. It is designed for small and midsize branch offices and offers simplified management.

Dell Chassis Management Controller (CMC) helps manage, monitor, configure and deploy different hardware components in Dell PowerEdge VRTX Solution. It lets you access all the iDRACs of all the server nodes as well. Thus, It provides a holistic remote management capability that allows you to manage the solution from anywhere at any time irrespective of the status of the Operating System.

PowerShell 3.0 is the new version in Windows Server 2012. It is installed by default in Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012. The CIM Cmdlets in PowerShell 3.0 allow seamless communication with any device that supports the DMTF standards - CIM and WSMAN or DCOM. PowerShell 4.0, which is a part of Windows Server 2012 R2 /Windows 8.1, also supports the CIM Cmdlets that were first introduced in PowerShell 3.0.

Integration of PowerShell in Windows Server 2012 / 2012 R2 along with Dell iDRAC7 provides a rich set of remote management capabilities on the VRTX solution. You can install either Windows Management Framework 3.0 or Windows Management Framework 4.0 on your Windows 2008 R2+ or Windows 7 client systems and begin remote managing the Servers!

There may be a case where you have setup a remote desktop session to one of the node’s Operating systems (OS) from your management station. Now, if you need to quickly get to the CMC to manage any of the components then you can do so by retrieving the CMC IP Address in-band from within the OS.

This post focuses retrieving CMC IP Address via In-Band mechanism. This script uses the IPMI functionality that comes native within the OS.

The script illustrates In-band retrieval of CMC IP Address. Please see the attached script VRTX_CMCIPAddress.ps1. Click here to download.

For more related articles visit Managing Dell PowerEdge VRTX using Windows PowerShell

This blog post was originally written by Aditi Satam and Syama Poluri. Send your suggestions or comments to WinServerBlogs@dell.com.

The Dell VRTX Chassis is a converged infrastructure solution that includes four separate compute nodes, network infrastructure, and a shared storage subsystem. This blog post illustrates how you can get information about the server blades.

Dell Chassis Management Controller (CMC) helps manage, monitor, configure and deploy different hardware components in the Dell PowerEdge VRTX Solution. CMC lets you access all iDRACs from the server nodes as well. Thus, CMC provides a holistic remote management capability that enables you to manage the VRTX solution from anywhere at any time irrespective of the operating system status.

Integration of PowerShell in Windows Server 2012 / 2012 R2 along with Dell iDRAC7 provides a rich set of remote management capabilities on the VRTX solution. You can install either Windows Management Framework 3.0 or Windows Management Framework 4.0 on your Windows 2008 R2+ or Windows 7 client systems and remotely manage the servers!

The following script creates a CIM session to the CMC of the VRTX chassis and retrieves the server information of all compute nodes present in the chassis using the WSMAN protocol.

Click here to download the script- VRTX_Inventory.ps1. This script prints the information as well as saves it in an xml format.

Thus, using only the CMC IP address, username and password, you can access the hardware and firmware inventory of the VRTX chassis and its blades. Below is the sample output for the server in SLOT 1. Similar information will be presented for all server blades present in the VRTX chassis.

Additional Resources:

Managing Dell PowerEdge Servers with Windows PowerShell and Dell iDRAC

For more related articles visit Managing Dell PowerEdge VRTX using Windows PowerShell

What is SR-IOV?

SR-IOV is a standard that can present single PCIe device (this is called Physical Function) as multiple independent PCIe devices (each one is called Virtual Function) to Operating Systems and hypervisors.

As VMware started supporting SR-IOV (Single Root IO Virtualization) feature since ESXi 5.1 version, the feature is gradually matured in ESXi 5.5. This blog captures enhancements and new features added in ESXi 5.5 when compared to ESXi 5.1 release.

NOTE:SR-IOV supports up to 43 virtual functions on supported Intel NICs and up to 64 virtual functions on supported Emulex NICs. The actual number of virtual functions available for pass-through depend on number of interrupts vectors required by each of them.

References:

http://en.community.dell.com/techcenter/b/techcenter/archive/2012/10/26/sr-iov-and-vmware-esxi.aspx

http://pubs.vmware.com/vsphere-55/index.jsp#com.vmware.vsphere.networking.doc/GUID-CC021803-30EA-444D-BCBE-618E0D836B9F.html

http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vsphere5/r55/vsphere-55-configuration-maximums.pdf