Windows Server 2012 R2 Brings Improvements to DNS and DHCP Management

DNS and DHCP - they are like two sides to same coin.  At the core, DNS maps human friendly names to IP addresses so we can find resources on the Internet easily, the other hands out IP addresses and other configuration information to computers so they can be accessible on the network.
Both have been around since what seems like the beginning of time, but both have some new improvements with Windows Server 2012 R2.

First, there have been some improvements for DNSSEC support. In Server 2012, the Key Master role only existed for AD-integrated zone, but now that has been extended to support file-backed multi-master zones as well.

Also, the key management service (key generation, storage, retirement) has been isolated to only the key master of a zone.  All other primary DNS servers for zone can continue signing a zone by accessing the keys managed by the master.

Next, let's bring on the PowerShell improvements.  While DNS on Windows Server 2012 already has a substantial list of statistics available using the Get-DnsServerStatistics, new Zone related statistics have been added for zone query stats, zone transfer stats and zone update stats.

There are also some brand new cmdlets for controlling DNSSEC, to support some of the improvements, like managing Trust Anchors. You can find the complete list of the cmdlets on TechNet, at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn305898.aspx

For the DHCP Server, new PowerShell cmdlets have been added for managing superscopes and multicast scopes, as well as improvements in some of the existing commands for changing failover relationships and interacting with DNS. There are over a dozen new additions, but some of the cmdlets include:

• Add-DhcpServerv4MulticastScope
• Add-DhcpServerSecurityGroup
• Get-DhcpServerv4MulticastScopeStatistics
• Get-DhcpServerv4SuperscopeStatistics

But it’s not all about PowerShell improvements. There are two DHCP improvements that enhance client DNS registrations. 

The first one extends DHCP polices to configure conditions based on the FQDN of the clients. Or clients can be registered using a different DNS suffix than the one configured on the client.
The second enhancement enables you to configure the DHCP server to register only A records for clients with the DNS server.  This can avoid failed attempts to register PTR records when a reverse lookup zone isn’t configured. PTR record registration can be disabled for all clients of a DHCP server, or by specific subnet or attribute.

Overall these new features can give you better granular control of devices on the network, including workgroup and guest devices. 

Looking for more information about what's new with Windows Server 2012 R2?  Check out the full list of blog posts in this series, Why Windows Server 2012 R2?.  Also, don't forget to take a moment to download the Server 2012 R2 bits so you can try it all out for yourself.

Close, But Not Too Close! Azure Affinity Groups and Availability Sets

Microsoft has several regional datacenters for hosting Azure IaaS. There are two on the west coast, two on the east coast and two each in Europe and Asia. When you create a VM you are required to select a region, at minimum, where your VM will be located.  If you just go with a regional selection, you leave it up to the Azure fabric to control where your machine is placed.

For more granular control, you have two other components you need to take advantage of – Affinity Groups and Availability Sets.

By creating an affinity group, you are giving the Azure fabric some additional logic to keep your VMs physically closer together within the datacenter. This might be important if you are hosting an application or service that has multiple server components and you want them to closer together to reduce any potential latency across the internal network.

To create an affinity group, you provide a name and create a network that is associated with it.  Then all the VMs added to that affinity group also will be given addressing from the associated virtual network. Affinity groups are created in your Azure settings area.

Having your servers close together in the physical fabric is good, but being TOO close could be bad.  For high availability, you’ll also want to make sure that your servers aren’t all on the same rack or within the same fault domain in the datacenter.  If a whole rack goes down due to a hardware issue, you wouldn’t want an entire cloud service to go with it.

That’s where “Availability Sets” come in.  An “availability set” allows you to define a group of servers that perform the same role and Windows Azure separates them across fault domains and ensures that at least one of them is always available. 

You can set up availability sets in two places: within the autoscale properties for a cloud services (as they are required for autoscale to function), or from the configuration settings of an individual server.

Used with Affinity Groups, you can then get all your servers close together for performance, but separate enough to ensure that your environment can survive fabric maintenance windows or fault events. 

Close, but not too close. Perfect!

Help Shape the Future Microsoft Virtualization, Cloud, and Datacenter Management Products

Got some great ideas about what Microsoft should do with virtualization, the cloud and the datacenter?  Do you actively virtualize systems or want to get more in-depth with the future of virtualization?

Microsoft Windows Server and Systems Center Customer Research team is looking for ITPros to participate on an IT Pro panel.

As a member of the panel, you will have the opportunity to provide vision and feedback to the Cloud and Data Center Management Product team through surveys, focus groups, usability sessions, early design concept reviews, and customer interviews.

The research team is looking for very specific expertise profiles. Use of Microsoft products IS NOT required. To help identify if you qualify, start by completing a short survey.

Please note, this is only for customers located in the US but there is work toward extending to an international audience soon. Once again, you do not have to use Microsoft products to participate.
Interested? Want to learn more? Click to access the survey.

Northern California Powershell Users Group in SF!

Tonight, I had the honor of hosting the Northern California Powershell Users Group in San Francisco.  The topic was using Azure with Powershell.

For those of you who were there, a lot of conversation revolved around provisioning and managing Azure and I wanted to mention that Microsoft (via Technet Events) just finished up a round of IT Camps for Azure IaaS.

At those events, attendees build out a dev/test environment in Azure and while most of the lab guide detailed everything out with using the GUI, there was a bonus challenge at the end that included doing everything with Powershell.

If you are looking to start using Azure with Powershell and want a good place to start experimenting, I suggest getting a free Azure Trial and then downloading the lab manual to give it a shot yourself.  You can find a copy of the lab manual at http://aka.ms/SlidesPlus under the “Azure Camp – Fall 2013” folder.

You’ll find the “Challenge Exercise” and instructions on where to find the necessary Powershell, towards the end of the manual.

Enjoy!

Build a Hyper-V Lab for a Chance to Win a Surface Pro!

This is for US residents only, but here's a chance to get in on the "IT Pro Cloud OS Challenge" and will some nice prizes while learning about Hyper-V Server. The content runs through the month of November and you can find all the details below!
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Build your very own Hyper-V Server 2012 R2 for FREE and Enter for a chance to win* one of the following fantastic prizes:

• Three Grand Prizes: One of three Microsoft Surface Pro 64GB devices with Type Cover keyboard cover ($828.99 USD Retail Value)
   
• Twenty-Five First Prizes: One of twenty-five Microsoft Certification Exam Vouchers ($150.00 USD Retail Value)

You could win a Microsoft Surface Pro or Certification Exam Voucher!

But Wait! There’s More! In addition to a chance to win one of the prizes above, EVERY ENTRANT will receive our Hyper-V Server 2012 R2 enterprise-grade bare-metal hypervisor software completely free.  This is a fully functional virtualization hypervisor that supports scalability up to 320 logical processors, 4TB physical RAM, live migration and highly-available clustering. Hyper-V serves as the virtualization foundation for Private Clouds leveraging Windows Server 2012 R2 and System Center 2012 R2.

You can enter the IT Pro“Cloud OS Challenge” Sweepstakes by completing all of the THREE EASY TASKS below to download and build your Private Cloud foundation with Hyper-V Server 2012 R2.  Be sure to complete the last task to submit your proof-of-completion for entry into this sweepstakes.

• Entries must be received between November 1, 2013 and November 30, 2013 to be eligible. One entry per individual.
• This Sweepstakes is open to all IT Professionals Age 18 and over that are legal residents of the United States.
• Estimated Completion Time: 20 minutes

TASK 1 – Download Hyper-V Server 2012 R2

Download the Hyper-V Server 2012 R2 installation bits using the link below.

DO IT: Download Hyper-V Server 2012 R2

TASK 2 – Install Hyper-V Server 2012 R2

Install Hyper-V Server 2012 R2 in your lab environment using the installation steps linked below.

DO IT: Install Hyper-V Server 2012 R2

TASK 3 – Submit Proof-of-Completion

Complete the steps in this task to submit your proof-of-completion entry into the IT Pro “Cloud OS Challenge” Sweepstakes for a chance to win one of the exciting prizes listed above.

1. At the console command prompt of your new Hyper-V Server 2012 R2 server, run the following command to collect your server's configuration:
   
   systeminfo >CloudOSConfig.txt
    
2. Copy the CloudOSConfig.txt file created in Step 1 above to a USB storage device or other location that is accessible for sending an email.
    
3. Send a new email message to CloudChallenge@microsoft.com
    
4. IMPORTANT: In the body of the email, include this exact text:
   “I’ve completed the Microsoft IT Pro Cloud OS Challenge for Hyper-V Server 2012 R2.”
    
5. IMORTANT: Attach the file created in Step 1 into the body of the new email message created above.
    
6. Click the Send button in your email client to submit the email message as your proof-of-completion and sweepstakes entry.

Upon submitting your entry, you will receive a confirmation email within 24-hours.

COMPLETED! But … Want more?
Now that you’ve installed Hyper-V Server 2012 R2, continue your learning and evaluation with these additional resources.

• Want to learn more about Hyper-V Server 2012 R2 and Microsoft Private Cloud?
  • COMPLETE this Step-by-Step Guide for Hyper-V Server 2012 R2.
  • MANAGE Hyper-V Server 2012 R2 with local console tools.
  • CLUSTER Hyper-V Server 2012 R2 for highly available virtual machines.
  • MIGRATE Virtual Machine workloads to Hyper-V Server 2012 R2.
  • BUILD Your Private Cloud with System Center 2012 R2.

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*NO PURCHASE NECESSARY. Open only to IT Professionals who are legal residents of the 50 U.S. states or D.C., 18+. Sweepstakes ends November 30, 2013.  For Official Rules, see http://aka.ms/CloudChallenge201311Rules.