Windows Server 2016 enables building a Software-Defined Data Center (SDDC) with new layers of security and Azure-related approach for hosting business applications and infrastructure. The new Software-Defined Network (SDN) Stack  provides dynamic security and hybrid flexibility by enforcing network policy in the Hyper-V Virtual Switch using the Azure Virtual Filtering Platform (VFP) Switch Extension. Instead of programming network configurations into a physical switch,  the new Microsoft Network Controller delivers the network policy to the Hyper-V Hosts using the OVSDB protocol and is programmed into the VFP extension of the vSwitch by a Host Agent which enforces the policy.

It has three years since VMware announced and showcased NSX to the world. Since then everyone and then some has announced their version of SDN. You have players such a Cisco, Cumulus Networks and of course VMware in this space. All doing SDN in their own unique way. Cisco being the biggest network player of course wants to move hardware to your datacenter. Therefore, their way to SDN is to buy new boxes. Another player is Cumulus Networks, again theirs another focus. Here the OS is king. Build on open source components Cumulus Networks deliver the OS for SDN, which run on any white box. If you do not want to build your own white box networks based on Cumulus Networks many vendors have, join Cumulus Networks. Vendors such as HPE, Dell and Supermicro amongst others are selling switches, which comes with Cumulus Networks OS baked in. Even Microsoft is entering the stage of SDN with Server 2016, though one could argue a bit late, but then better late than never.

The placement of the virtual machines in a Hyper-V cluster is an important step to ensure performance and high availability. To make a highly available application, usually, a cluster is deployed spread across two or more virtual machines. In case of a Hyper-V node is crashing, the application must keep working. But the VM placement concerns also its storage and its network. Let’s think about a storage solution where you have several LUNs (or Storage Spaces) according to a service level. Maybe you have an LUN with HDD in RAID 6 and another in RAID 1 with SSD. You don’t want that the VM which requires intensive IO was placed on HDD LUN.

Yesterday I saw a blog post in Homelab subreddit discussing what Intel NUC to choose. I have spent quite some time recently to choose the right server for my homelab expansion and I have considered a lot of options. I was also looking at Intel  NUC as many other fellow IT professionals, but luckily last month I read on Tinkertry.com that Supermicro had just released new Mini-1U SuperServers – SYS-E300-8D and SYS-E200-8D.  I had some discussions with my colleagues and other people on Reddit and TinkerTry and I came to the conclusion that if you are aimed to run home lab for virtualization Intel NUC shouldn’t be considered. I believe SuperMicro is a new king on the market of mini servers for home lab.

vSphere Replication has proved to be a great bonus to any paid vSphere license. It is an amazing and simple tool that provides cheap and semi-automated Disaster Recovery solution. Another great use case for vSphere Replication is migration of virtual machines.

From December 2015, Microsoft has given the possibility to create your own RBAC roles. I will show you today, how to do this. To start, connect via PowerShell to your Azure RM subscription:

This is a follow up post on a post we have done previously – How To Convert EXE To MSI Package In 5 Easy Steps – where we created a MSI package for an application that did not exists as MSI, so we had no choice. We used third party software to repackage our application.