Why do we need Site Recovery with virtualization?  Well, think about it – lots of organizations are virtualizing, which means they’re placing more eggs, in fewer baskets, however, at the same time, they are benefiting from features like Live Migration and High Availability to ensure uptime is as high as possible.  What would happen though, if their site lost power?  Well, for a short time, the UPS will keep you going, but before long…the SAN – gone.  Servers – gone.  Switches – gone.  The site is down – even High Availability won’t save you there.  Well, local High Availability won’t.

So what is the difference between High Availability (HA) and Disaster Recovery (DR)

High-Availability (HA) allows applications or VMs to maintain service availability by moving them between nodes in a cluster but whenever a catastrophic event that lead to lose of the entire datacenter the HA won’t be useful in this situation and that drive us to define the Disaster Recovery (DR)

Disaster Recovery (DR) allows applications or VMs to maintain service availability by moving them to a cluster node in a different physical location and this also drive us to think on Multi-Site Cluster

Multi-site Clustering

A feature of Windows Server Enterprise, since, well, 2003, has been Multi-site Clustering, or, as it has been known, Stretch Clustering, where you’re effectively stretching a cluster over WAN distances.  Problem with 2003 Multi-site clusters, was the requirement, among other things, for a single-subnet environment across the WAN.  In 2008, and subsequently in R2, this requirement no longer exists, but can be used if required.

The concept behind failover clustering across multiple sites is very simple. Why have separate islands of management for HA and DR? Why not take your HA setup and extend it to another site, thereby obtaining the added protection of geographic distance? Having a single management interface with failover automation provides an easy-to-use solution that gives you the best of both worlds.  Multi-site failover clustering does exactly this. Multiple local nodes provide traditional HA functionality in the event of local server failure. Local application migration (from physical server to physical server) is also available for zero-downtime server maintenance. The cluster is then extended to another site. The process is as easy as adding another node to the cluster. It even works across different subnets, thus eliminating the need for stretched subnets. Multi-site failover clustering can be used to protect key Microsoft Windows workloads like SQL – Exchange and Hyper-V

The key element that the in-box feature does not orchestrate is the failover of the storage.  Think about it for a second – Site 1 is your active site, and has a SAN in Read/Write, along with nodes actively hosting VMs.  The SAN is being replicated to Site 2, where the SAN is in Read mode.  Site 1 goes BOOM.  What orchestrates the SAN switchover?  What orchestrates the connection of replicated LUNS to standby nodes in Site 2?  These are just 2 of the factors that need to be considered, and factored in, when planning a Multi-site configuration another consideration also have to be taken into account, my recommendation also is to consult the Storage provider before designing a DR site.

So what’s happened when…..

No Second SAN?

What about smaller environments, that don’t have the infrastructure, nor the budget, to house a second SAN and associated cluster nodes in another site?  Can they not achieve site resiliency?  Of course they can – there are a number of options available to them, from vendors like FalconStor, DoubleTake, and Steeleye

I will take a dive here on Citrix Essential for Hyper-V as a site recovery provider which enables the Cluster stretching with Hyper-V but in the presence of SAN storage

Citrix Essentials for Hyper-V

Before we go into the specifics around Site Recovery, it’s important to expand on what Essentials for Hyper-V actually is, as it’s more than just Site Recovery.  From the Citrix Essential for Hyper-V website:

Citrix Essentials for Hyper-V includes:

• Citrix® StorageLink™ technology exposes the advanced data and storage management features in today’s storage systems directly to a Hyper-V environment.
• StorageLink Site Recovery allows organizations to easily implement and manage site-to-site disaster recovery for Hyper-V virtual machines.
• Automated lab management enables self-service setup and tear down of non-production Hyper-V virtual environments typically used in development, support, and training organizations reducing management complexity, time, and cost.
• Stage management streamlines the process of building, testing, sharing, and delivering applications, using Hyper-V virtual machines, on demand, into production environments.
• Dynamic provisioning services provides simple deployment of workloads to any combination of Hyper-V virtual machines or physical Windows® servers from a single golden image.
• Workflow Orchestration enables customized automation of key management processes for Hyper-V virtual infrastructure.

So, 6 technologies in there, each with significant benefits of their own (of which the links above will provide you with more information, but what about pricing and versions?

As you can see, the Express Edition provides the StorageLink technology, which provides Windows administrators running Hyper-V virtual machines the ability to dramatically simplify their storage management processes with quick and easy storage configuration and provisioning for their Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V and System Center virtual infrastructures.  Citrix Essentials helps Hyper-V administrators take full advantage of powerful storage-based features like deduplication, thin provisioning, cloning, snapshots and replication.  You can get more info on Express here, but remember, the Express Edition of Citrix Essentials for Hyper-V supports up to two Hyper-V servers and one storage array.  If you need more, you’ll have to look at the Enterprise of Platinum Editions, which are priced at $1500 and $3000 per host respectively. At $3000 per Server, it compares pretty favourably with VMware SRM from a pricing perspective, with SRM coming in at $2118 per CPU (inc 1 year Gold S&S), up to $2867 per CPU (inc 3 year Platinum S&S), which, for a typical 2 CPU box, would mean $4216 and $5734 respectively, but remember, for your $3000 per server, you’re also getting 5 other technologies thrown in too

StorageLink Site Recovery

Citrix StorageLink Site Recovery dramatically simplifies the setup and configuration of disaster recovery protection of Hyper-V workloads through direct integration with storage array-based controls for data replication and copy services.  Together, Microsoft Hyper-V and Citrix StorageLink Site Recovery reduce the cost and complexity of implementing disaster recovery for critical server workloads

What about other benefits?

• Easy setup – Use StorageLink Site Recovery wizards to initiate remote replication between arrays, and designate Hyper-V virtual machines for protection in minutes.
• Reliable configuration – Automate disaster recovery configuration validation with built-in configuration checks to eliminate complex, error prone operations that can otherwise hinder recovery of critical infrastructure.
• Non-disruptive testing – StorageLink Site Recovery includes the ability to stage replicated virtual machines in isolated environments for testing and validation of disaster recovery plans without disrupting ongoing replication.
• Fast recovery – Single-click controls for failover of protected Hyper-V workloads helps ensure fast recovery at remote disaster recovery locations

What about requirements?

The following are the basic requirements:

• At least one Microsoft Hyper-V host at both the primary and secondary locations.
• Replication-enabled storage arrays (See the Citrix StorageLink Gateway HCL for a list of supported arrays).
• A StorageLink Site Recovery-enabled version of Citrix Essentials for Microsoft Hyper-V for each Hyper-V host involved in the Site Recovery configuration.
• Network connectivity between the primary and secondary locations with sufficient bandwidth to handle ongoing replication of protected virtual machines.

Once organizations have the basic Citrix and Microsoft components in place, the implementation of disaster recovery protection is very easy:

1. Configure StorageLink Storage Repositories at both primary and secondary locations.
2. Designate a primary storage array and secondary storage array using the StorageLink interface.
3. Map StorageLink Storage Repositories for replication.
4. Use the StorageLink interface to select the virtual machines to be protected.
5. Export the disaster recovery configuration from the primary StorageLink instance.  Then import the configuration to the secondary instance of StorageLink.
6. Once initial synchronization of primary and secondary storage resources completes, Hyper-V workloads are ready for testing and fail-over operations.

For more details on Citrix Essential for Hyper-V (Site Recovery)

 Citrix Essentials Site Recovery – Setting Up Protection

Citrix Essentials Site Recovery – Validation and Testing

Citrix Essentials Site Recovery – Initiating Failover

Finally there is some validations and checking list that you have to go through before start building multi-site cluster or stretch your existing cluster to DR site:

In my Next Post on Hyper-V Cluster Streatching i will go more deep on how to build and streatch the Cluster to establish the DR site.

Simplify planning for upgrade or migration to the latest Microsoft products and technologies with the Microsoft Assessment and Planning (MAP) Toolkit 5.5 Beta. This multifaceted tool is now even better—withassessment for easier migration to Windows Azure and SQL Azure, heterogeneous databasediscovery for SQL Server migration projects, Windows Internet Explorer 8 upgrade assessment, and much more—MAP 5.5 Beta includes new features to help you streamline planning for your next migration project.

Desktop migration projects are easier with the hardware assessment for Windows 7 and Internet Explorer. The MAP 5.5 Internet Explorer Upgrade Assessment inventories and reports on browser helper objects, add-ins, and plug-ins—and delivers the findings in a convenient migration assessment report and proposal.

Enhanced server consolidation features help users save time and effort when creating virtualization assessments and proposals. Enhancements include improved data accuracy, updated hardware libraries with the latest CPU models, customized server selection, and improved scalability and reliability for more data collection and better analysis.

MAP also helps accelerate SQL Server migration projects with heterogeneous database discovery for MySQL, Oracle, and Sybase instances.

Enjoy quicker, easier migrations and upgrades—saving your organization time and money—when you take advantage of the agentless, automated discovery and detailed infrastructure assessments from MAP.

What’s new with MAP Toolkit 5.5?

Assess your environment for upgrade to Windows 7 and Windows Internet Explorer 8 (or the latest version). Are you looking for a tool to simplify your organization’s migration to Windows 7 and Internet Explorer 8—and, in turn, enjoy improved desktop security, reliability and manageability? The MAP 5.5 Internet Explorer Upgrade Assessment inventories your environment and reports on deployed web browsers, Microsoft ActiveX controls, plug-ins and toolbars, and then generates a migration assessment report and proposal—information you need to more easily migrate to Windows 7 and Internet Explorer 8 (or the latest version).

Identify and analyze web application, and database readiness for migration to Windows Azure and SQL Azure. Simplify your move to the cloud with the MAP 5.5 automated discovery and detailed inventory reporting on database and web application readiness for Windows Azure and SQL Azure. MAP identifies web applications, IIS servers, and SQL Server databases, analyzes their performance characteristics, and estimates required cloud features such as number of Windows Azure compute instances, number of SQL Azure databases, bandwidth usage, and storage.

Discover heterogeneous database instances for migration to SQL Server. Now with heterogeneous database inventory supported, MAP 5.5 helps you accelerate migration to SQL Server with network inventory reporting for MySQL, Oracle, and Sybase instances.

Enhanced server consolidation assessments for Hyper-V.

Enhanced server consolidation capabilities help you save time and effort when creating virtualization assessments and proposals. Enhancements include:

• Updated hardware libraries allowing you to select from the latest Intel and AMD processors.                       
• Customized server selection for easy editing of assessment data.                                                                                                                                   
• Data collection and store every five minutes for more accurate reporting.
•  Better scalability and reliability, requiring less oversight of the data collection process.
• Support for more machines.

More Info here https://connect.microsoft.com/site297

Up until this point, Azure has primarily been an platform-as-a-service (PAAS) offering. This new virtual machine role brings Microsoft into the infrastructure-as-a-service (IAAS) world, and directly into competition with Amazon, which has been offering its EC2 service since 2006 — and Windows operating system support since 2008, before Azure was even announced. As elegant as the Azure platform might be as an architecture, it’s also intimidating to customers that are getting started with cloud computing — that’s just about everyone, isn’t it? The ability to migrate existing applications to cloud-based servers encourages people to get their feet wet; up until now the best place to do that was on Amazon Web Services.

Although IAAS requires customers to do more of the grunt work of managing servers, it’s a natural and simple transition to cloud-based services. You just create an operating system image for the software to be run in the VM image, upload it to the cloud, and spin it up on one or more VM instances. You can easily migrate existing servers to a cloud without changing any of the application software. That’s not the case with Azure, which is a new platform (incorporating many existing Microsoft technologies) best suited for new development.

When it comes to cloud computing, Microsoft has one big advantage over its competitors: it doesn’t have to pay for Windows licenses. This adds some uncertainty for Amazon EC2 pricing, and Amazonconcedes it with a disclaimer: “If Microsoft chooses to increase the license fees that it charges for Windows, we may correspondingly increase the per-hour usage rate for previously purchased Reserved Instances with Windows.”

Essentially, Microsoft has simply broadened the Azure umbrella to cover VM-based IAAS as well. Yet I’m still puzzled why this didn’t happen sooner. If anything, it seems like Microsoft could have started Azure with IAAS and let customers grow into PAAS as they became comfortable with having their data in the cloud. Now, it may become harder for Microsoft to convince the industry it’s a leader (or even a player) when Amazon has a four-year head start on the IAAS business.

The Microsoft purchase, about which no financial details were disclosed, indicates that “there is little question that within the next decade, we will see natural user interfaces become common for input across all devices,” Canesta President and CEO Jim Spare said in a statement. “With Microsoft’s breadth of scope from enterprise to consumer products, market presence, and commitment to NUI (natural user interfaces), we are confident that our technology will see wide adoption across many applications that embody the full potential of the technology.”

Canesta makes a camera that picks up 3D images, such as a person sitting in front of a laptop, game console, or TV, and enables him or her to use facial expressions or hand gestures to control the device.

Canesta had previously signed an agreement with Hitachi to bring its technology to TVs. Sony has also incorporated Canesta’s technology in the EyeToy accessory for the PlayStation. Similar motion control technology at work right now is Microsoft Kinect for the Xbox.

A year ago, Canesta took a $16 million round of funding from several partners, including contract manufacturer Quanta, which has said it would incorporate the technology into laptops.

Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-31021_3-20021265-260.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20#ixzz13pDHbgQN

Microsoft announced the deal in the blogpost. Opalis is a Toronato based company leader in IT process automation software. The acquisition aims to improve the efficiency of IT staff and operations, and give customers a greater process consistency.

Microsoft will be integrating Opalis’s capabilities to Microsoft System Center to help customers automate complex IT processes, increase cost savings and shorten timeframes for IT service delivery across physical, virtual and cloud computing environments.

Microsoft went in a deal with Opalis because Opalis has a strong work force and according to customer’s feedback Opalis software is easy to use, easy to deploy and delivers value in a short period of time. Also according to the blogpost “Opalis products integrate with System Center, and will allow System Center to integrate with other infrastructure software from CA, BMC, HP and others to integrate across an IT organization.”

The acquisition terms allows Opalis to continue fulfill their existing commitments to customers and continue to deliver support as Microsoft transition Opalis to the Microsoft systems and processes.

Amore Details about the transition from Opalis to Microsoft System Center Family of Products can be found in the below path

http://www.microsoft.com/pathways/opalis/

when try to add the SCOM server FQDN (SCOM 2007 SP1) to VMM Server in the Administration tape under System Center I got the following Error:

“The Virtual Machine Manager service does not have required credentials to access the Operations Manager SDK service on Computername. Add the VMM service account as an Administrator on the Operations Manager server, and then try the operation again. ID: 11804″

The SCOM Runing under SDKservice account (Domain Account) – and VMM runing under LocalSystem Account

the problem was due to an issue with the SPN for the SDK service

The Solution we did to solve the problem:

1. Add the VMM server account as an Local Admin in the SCOM Server
2. Register the SPN for the SDK Service in the Domain Controller ( Setspn MSOMSdkSvc/<RMS FQDN> and  Setspn MSOMSdkSvc/<RMS NETBIOSNAME> )
3. Create Group in the DC and add the VMM server Account into it then add this group in SCOM user roles under Administration – User Roles – Operations Manager Administrators )

the Proplem was solved and the Integration between the SCOM and SCVMM succeeded.