In the previous article, we have covered the basics of Microsoft Windows Server Core installation. After configuring the operating system and specifying the networks and storage for the future configuration, there are few more things left.

Our next step is to install and configure the Hyper-V role.

Installation of the Hyper-V role by itself is extremely simple. You need to open the PowerShell window by typing in “Powershell” command in the command prompt. In order to install the Hyper-V role through the PowerShell, enter the following:

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When it comes to SQL Server database indexes there is a wide scale of variation in depth of knowledge on this important topic among IT professionals leveraging SQL Server power while not necessarily being specialist DBA. Let’s discuss SQL server indexes a bit here with non-SQL DBAs/non-DB developers audience in mind covering why and how sides of the subject.

I still remember one of my interviews where I was asked something along the lines of “what comprises a database?” Being an experienced IT professional, I’ve instantly said something about rows and columns forming tables and entities within those, and something about relations between entities/tables and once I said my “that’s it without going into details too much” one of the interviewers said: “And what about indexes?”, “ah, yes indexes…” was my response. I think this is beginning of the scale of non-SQL professional knowledge about indexes – you are vaguely aware that they exist and have some vague idea about what they do.

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Microsoft’s Hybrid Cloud appliance to run Azure in your datacenter has finally reached to General Availability (GA) and the Integration Systems (Dell EMC, HPE and Lenovo for this first iteration) are formally taking orders from customers, which will receive their Azure Stack solution in September. But, what exactly represents Azure Stack? Why is this important to organizations?

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This series of articles will guide you through the basic deployment of Microsoft Windows Server 2016 Core version, covering all the steps from an initial installation to the deployment of Hyper-V role and Failover Cluster configuration.

The first and the main thing you need to double-check before installing the Windows Server 2016 Core is whether your hardware meets the system requirements of WS 2016. This also is very important in the process of planning your environment, in order to be sure that you have enough amount of compute resources for running your production workload.

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Orchestrator is a workflow management solution for the data center. Orchestrator lets you automate the creation, monitoring, and deployment of resources in your environment. Orchestrator is also known as “SCORCH” or “SCO”. Orchestrator uses a drag and drop graphical interface to allow admins to define runbooks. A runbook is a compilation of routine procedures and operations that Orchestrator will run depending on your scheduling. Finally, Orchestrator is capable of managing multiple operating systems.

After reading this guide, you should have a basic understanding of how to upgrade/install Orchestrator.

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I recently looking for Azure Automation, from top to bottom. It’s why, in the next 2 articles, we will see how to use this tool, from A to Z:

• [Azure Automation] Interface discovery – Part 1 (this post)
• [Azure Automation] Migrate your scripts to Azure – Part 2

Start with the first article.

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Very often, VMware vSphere administrators have to find the reasons of performance issues by analyzing the historical data of various metrics on the VMware vCenter Server. However, sometimes the default set of metrics is not enough if you view performance data for the previous night or the end of the past week – in this case, you need to change the level of collected metrics and, possibly, the frequency of their collection and retention.

In the VMware vCenter Server settings, you can set the data collection levels, different collection intervals and the time period that the data will be stored on the Server. In addition, you can set an approximate size of the virtual infrastructure in the host servers and virtual machines, which will allow to roughly estimate the size of the vCenter database. Let’s take a closer look at these settings.

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As we referenced several times, security is one of the main topics for cloud providers looking to guarantee privacy for their customers’ data and information. Microsoft just announced the public availability for Storage Service Encryption (SSE) for Azure Managed Disks, with no additional cost.

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Introduction

VMDK file to LUN storage architecture has been the most usable scenario for years until VMware released Virtual Volumes in vSphere 6.0. In the case of an array with block access, own VMware file system – VMFS  – was used -, and NFS was used for file storage. The array capacity was divided into LUNs or NFS-shares and presented ESXi hosts in the datastore form. Frequently, datastore is a large capacity storage housing numerous VMs. In fact, allocating a separate datastore for each VM is quite inconvenient and time-consuming in terms of administration.

With this approach, the VM storage maintenance operations are at the datastore level, and not at the Virtual Machine level. The operations like snapshots, replication, deduplication, encryption, etc. are performed at the storage level, thus being implemented faster with no use of compute and networking resources. The traditional VM storage technology described in vSphere is still supported. At once, Virtual Volumes (VVols) is an object containing VM files virtual disks and their derivatives.

This handy and at the same time advanced technology was integrated with StarWind Products, that I am about to implement.

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Many IT administrators or virtualization guys runs their homelabs at home. It is a good way to learn new technologies, be able to break things in a lab to get stronger skills.

It is sometimes a challenge, to squeeze as much RAM as possible from it. The main challenge is always a memory utilization. VMware VMs are getting memory hungry all the time and they are not “optimized” for Homelab use, but rather for production environments. Yes, it is the main purpose of those VMs after all.

One of the large VMs, but most critical, is VMware vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA). This product is becoming very popular within VMware communities and it is very easy to setup. Today we will have a look if we can do some optimizations and some “tweaks” to make it less memory hungry.

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