FileSystem NTFS Block Size

Artikel to MS for default Block Size here

CPS 1.0 Update 2 Released

There were a lot of changes in CPS for System Center, Windows Server 2012 R2 and DELL Hardware (FW, Drivers)

For all details: link

Windows Server 2016 TP3 and System Center 2016 TP3 released

Windows Server 2016 TP 3 download link
System Center 2016 TP3 download link

And a perfect Customer Experience Guides for Windows Server 2016 Technical Preview 3 can be found here

NEXT: iWarp vs. RoCE Chelsio vs. Mellanox 10 GB/s

WSUS Download Speed to slow since 2012 R2 up to 10 times faster

During my POC I need to bring a up to date WSUS to my customer dedicated environments with no WAN connectivity.
Every time I set up a fresh WSUS I had to wait 3 days after 20 GByte were downloaded with 2 MBit/s  with a 100Mbit/s internet connection . That was and is to slow.

The reason is that the BITS configuration was changed from Microsoft. To speed up your WSUS Server you have to:

Install on your WSUS Server:

Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Native Client
Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Command Line Utilities

You can download them from here:
link

Then navigate to the new folder:
C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\110\Tools\Binn

Run administrative CMD:
SQLCMD.exe -S \\.\pipe\Microsoft##WID\tsql\query -d "SUSDB" -Q "update tbConfigurationC set BitsDownloadPriorityForeground=1"

or

.\SQLCMD.exe -S \\.\pipe\Microsoft##WID\tsql\query -d "SUSDB" -Q "update tbConfigurationC set BitsDownloadPriorityForeground=1"


Revert:
SQLCMD.exe -S \\.\pipe\Microsoft##WID\tsql\query -d "SUSDB" -Q "update tbConfigurationC set BitsDownloadPriorityForeground=0"

Storage Spaces Direct - Processor Compatibility settings

Found this comment in a MS BLOG for Storage Spaces Direct SSDi in Windows Server 2016 as VM

"Note: Do not enable the virtual machine’s Processor Compatibility setting.  This setting disables certain processor capabilities that S2D requires inside the VM. This option is unchecked by default, and needs to stay that way.  You can see this setting here:"

Take this tutorial for further information: link

Storage Spaces Direct - Microsoft Windows Server 2016

A new great storage Feature in Windows Server 2016 is Storage Spaces Direct. Also known as Shared Nothing Scale out File Server.

The video from Ignite 2015 is here

Here are the features and requirements:

It can be deployed on Hyper-V  Server as "Private Cloud Hyper-Converged" installations
for small to medium size environment

Technical Preview 2 not yet  7:50 in video
update: Storage Spaces Direct works great in TP2
update 2: Storage Spaces Direct is much faster in TP3


It can be deployed in traditional way " Privat Cloud Storage"
Typically larger scale out deployments

• File System will be ReFS as primary file system
• Up to 240 Disks per Pool
• RDMA interconnect for low latency and low CPU usage
• Rebalancing for capacity (add node or remove node)
• Technical Preview 2 -- min. 4 Server - max 12 server - max of 240 disk in a pool

Required Hardware from DELL : R730xd (4 of them / LSI 9207-8i (Perc is not running at the moment)

Storage Spaces Data Placement:

Virtual disk consists of Extents (1GB)

Hyper-V Windows Server 2016 technical preview 2 from IGNITE 2015

New features in Hyper-V Windows Server 2016, not all Features are communicated until final release.

• Hyper-V is available on Nano Server 
• virtual TPM Security 
• Secure Boot for Linux (Ubuntu 14.04 / SUSE LES 12)
• Shielded VMs (encrypted by Bitlocker,etc) 
• SoFS can now QoS IO by owner of the VMs - Important for Tenants
•  Storage Resiliency with Resilience File Handle from SoFS. After 60 sec the VM is paused not crashed. After the network connectivity is restored the VM will restart running.
• Cluster Resiliency Feature: After a clusternode was removed from the cluster majority all VMs were turned off on this node. This was fixed by Isolation Mode for the VMs and clusternode, after the network came back the isolation mode exits and all VMs stay online.
• hotadd/ remove Memory static or dynamic configuration
• hotadd/ remove network adapter
• Upgrade from Windows Server 2012 R2 Cluster to Windows Server 2016 without downtime, with rollback function
•  support for production checkpoints, VSS Snapshot for SQL,Exchange during taking checkpoint. After restore of checkpoint the VM , the VM starts with a clean boot. The application and OS interpret this as a normal restore.
• PowerShell from host OS to guest OS
• ReFS for VHDX Operations 
• ReFS instance disk merge for checkpoints with zero data copy- this is really great
• ReFS instance fix disk creation

 -

Books and Whitepapers

Two great new free e-books about Azure Automation and VMM Hyper-V can be found here

Azure Automation

Deploy Hyper-V with SDS & SDN

a great whitepaper from Kristian Nese about

Hybrid Cloud with NVGRE (Cloud OS)


an overview to all free e-books:
here