Hyper-V is available now

As you know, a beta version of Hyper-V was included with the Windows 2008 release. It’s RTM (Released to Manufacturing) version was been released and it is ready for deployments. You can read more over here as well as download it from that link. And if you are new to Hyper-V, this MSDN post will be a good point to start from.

Virtualization Wars

We have covered virtualization before at our blog but mostly VMWare and a couple of posts on Virtual Server as well. With Windows Server 2008’s Hyper-V, it looks like it will challenge the market even more for ESX Server 3.5. With hardware changes coming in way faster than the software changes, the servers age out faster due to hardware issues rather than the OS. With virtualization, a physical server can easily be migrated into a virtual environment with the same applications and then moved on to a new physical hardware. We have clients who are using virtualization now even in their production environments let alone the development and QA environments.

If you are not already using virtualization in your environments, now would be the time to start getting serious about it. With Hyper-V, the technology moves the virtualization layer directly against the hardware. Hyper-V allows virtualization of both 32 bit as well as 64 bit architectures. MSFT has extended their virtualization platform offering by providing Microsoft App. virtualization (this was known as SoftGrid before) and desktop virtualization. not only that, one can use the System Center Virtual Machine Manager to do centralized management of a virtual set up.

Not only are these choices cost effective by providing us with consolidation and DR/HA (Disaster Recovery and High Availability) choices, it also eases up maintenance work for System Engineers as well as DBAs. An added benefit of consolidation is reduced electricity costs

Both ESX Server 3.5 and Hyper-V are based on hypervisor based architectures which are better than the previous hosted virtualization technologies. In the case of the hosted virtualization products, one had to run the virtualization software on top of the OS of the machine and that adds a lot of overhead and not only that, it has a longer code execution path for the VMs. Hypervisor based architectures run the hypervisor directly on the hardware which means that there is no OS between the hypervisor and the system hardware. Even though both ESX Server 3.5 and Hyper-V as both based on hypervisor base architectures, there are a good bit of differences between them. We are currently doing some benchmarks with ESX Server 3.5 as well as Hyper-V and will post the results of the tests at our blog as and when they become available and we consolidate them. Till then, you can read more on these over here:

ESX Server 3.5

Hyper-V and the FAQs

SQL Server on Windows 2008

Here is an excellent post from the folks at Microsoft on what needs to be done in order to install SQL Server (2005 or 2008 version) on Windows 2008…an excellent read:

http://blogs.msdn.com/sqlsecurity/archive/2008/07/01/sql-server-and-the-windows-server-2008-firewall.aspx

Performance Counters are missing

In yesterday’s post, we had discussed how to go about uploading the perfmon data into a database for querying the data using simple SQL scripts. In this post, we will cover the scenarios when you see that a lot of your performance counters are missing. This question was asked by one of our readers and is also a very common situation in many different shops. We have seen this happen when there are clustered servers or when counters get updated by a hot fix or a service pack.

If you look into the Windows resource kit, you will find a utility called CTRLIST.exe. This reports on all the objects and the counters that are loaded on a particular server. There is also a GUI version of the utility available and the reason why we would recommend using either the command line version or the GUI version is to be able to look at the specifics of the DLLs that are related to each of those counters. That way, it becomes easier to troubleshoot in case a counter is missing or is not working for some reason. You can download the Windows Resource Kit from here.

After reviewing the output from the GUI utility or the text file from the command line utility, you can then check the Windows Application and System logs to see if there are any warnings or errors related to the loading of the performance library. If nothing specific is noticed, we would recommend just unloading and reloading the counter, example:

If the SQL Server counters are missing in action:

a) From the output from the GUI/text file from the command line utility, make a note of the sqlctr.ini file location.

b) Unload the SQL Server counters by executing:

Unlodctr mssqlserver

c) Reload the counters:

Lodctr C:\Program Files\SQL\MSSQL.1\MSSQL\Binn\sqlctr.ini

If you are using a clustered instance, then you need to use the Virtual Server Name in the unload and reload commands and if you have a named instance, then you need to use the virtual server name. If that also does not work for you, look up this KB article from MSFT that talks about rebuilding the entire performance counter library. Please do all this on a test system first to become comfortable with the steps.

Some more acronyms for you

Ahhh… Acronyms - what will the IT world be without these wonderful acronyms. Yesterday, a good friend mentioned that he is working on a LAMP project. So, do you know what it stands for?

LAMP stands for:

L –> Linux

A –> Apache

M –> MySQL

P –> PHP

That’s the complete open source platform that he was using. Likewise, if you are using only a Windows based implementation, another acronym to be familiar with is WISA:

WISA stands for:

W –> Windows

I –> IIS

S –> SQL Server

A –> ASP.Net

Then, there are different permutations of these like: WISP or WASP or WIMP or WIMA (the alphabets stand for the same technologies as stated above).

Windows 2003 Standard Edition (32-bit) and the 3GB Switch

We have covered the difference between 32 bit vs 64-bit Windows/SQL install before and how the 3GB switch can be used to make 3GB memory (virtual) available to the user mode processes and you can even have a finer grained control over it by using the /userva parameter in the boot.ini file. You can read more on it here and here. 32-bit operating systems can address 4 GB of memory and the OS divides the address space evenly between user mode and kernel mode memory. Each user mode process can be allocated 2GB of private address space. If we use the /3GB switch in the boot.ini file, then the kernel memory space is reduced to 1GB of Virtual Address Space and the user mode processes that are Large Address Aware can use 3GB. By making use of the /userva option, we can reserve more space for the kernel. Applications like Exchange and SQL Server can take advantage of this increased memory

Of course, using PAE and AWE (on Enterprise and Data Center Editions 32-bit systems), one can make a large amount of virtual memory available but that is a discussion for another post.

In this post, we wanted to mention one thing in relation to the 32-bit Windows 2003 Standard Edition. If you are using Windows 2003 Standard Edition, then be careful with the usage of the 3GB parameter. In 32-bit Windows 2003 Standard Edition, even if you use the 3GB switch, we have found that the user mode applications can avail up-to only 2GB. If the flag is used in the boot.ini file, then the kernel is restricted to 1GB of addressable memory without the increase in the memory that can be used by the user mode applications which essentially means that you will lose the 1GB address space.

Here is an excellent whitepaper from IBM on tuning Windows Server 2003 and it covers the 3GB switch as well as the PAE (and PAE and 3GB combination changes):

http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/redpapers/pdfs/redp3943.pdf

Windows 7 and Multi-Touch

By now, you must have heard about Microsoft Surface - we had also covered it before in one of our posts. If you haven’t looked at it, here is the link. Some of those multi-touch innovations are making it’s way to the next version of Windows - Windows 7. All things digital had posted an interview of Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer and it has a video that demonstrates the multi-touch capabilities of Windows 7.  It’s a very interesting demo and a very good chat with Mr. Gates and Mr. Ballmer.  Interesting times are ahead…

Different Flavors of LINQ

LINQ stands for Language Integrated Query and it is a set of .Net framework extensions that allow us to query various data sources using a .Net language. There are a couple of different flavors of LINQ:

a) LINQ to SQL: This is for applications that use objects mapped to the database objects.

b) LINQ to Entities: This is for applications that need more flexibility in mapping objects to a RDBMS supported by the ADO.Net data providers.

c) LINQ to XML: This provides an in memory XML API.

d) LINQ to object: This allows us to do queries against the in memory objects.

e) LINQ to Sharepoint: This allows us to query MS Sharepoint lists.

f) LINQ to DataSet: This allows us to query DataSets.

You can get more information on LINQ using these resources:

MSDN Site, LINQ - Basic Introduction, HookedOnLINQ, LINQ to MS Sharepoint, LINQ Books - Pro LINQ, LINQ in Action.

Managing disk partitions in Windows with command line utilities

There are many utilities that are available to help manage disk partitions:

FSUTIL.exe: This is a command line utility that shows the information about the file system and can be used to perform disk related functions.

DFRG.msc and DEFRAG.exe: This is used for defragmentation of the disk drives though personally, I would recommend using Diskkeeper for this task.  DFRG.msc is the GUI utility and DEFRAG.exe is a command line utility.

DISKPART.exe: This is a command line utility that can be used to perform disk related functions.

CHKDSK.exe: This utility verifies and repairs FAT or NTFS formatted volumes.

CLEANMGR.exe: This utility is a GUI utility and is used for deleting un-used files.

SQL Server 2008 Deployment Guides from Dell

I was having a discussion with one of our client’s IT directors and he pointed out some deployment guides from Dell for SQL Server 2008 deployments. This client is one of the early adopters of SQL Server 2008 and is evaluating going live on it by the end of the year. These guides have a wealth of information in them and I would encourage everyone to read through them:

SQL Server 2008 CTP5, SQL Server 2008 on Windows 2003 and SQL Server 2008 on Windows 2008.