If you are traveling to Europe and are anything like me, here are some recommended items to bring on your trip. Continue reading Essential electronics for European travel
MHL USB OTG HDMI
Well I succeeded in naming a blog post with only acronyms.
This fun little device allows HDMI output from your android phone (think screen sharing). I picked one up from Ebay for about 7 dollars including HDMI cable. Quite a cool concept, however, in practice – not so much. Continue reading MHL USB OTG HDMI
Rogers mobile speed test results with HTC One on LTE
Being a Wind Mobile customer for more than a year and a half now, I have always been disappointed with their mobile speed (specifically the upload rate).
Today, I went to Vaughan Mills Mall where they had a display for the HTC One. After talking with the sales person for a few minutes, I convinced him to demonstrate the speed test for Rogers which he was using as a carrier for the new device. Continue reading Rogers mobile speed test results with HTC One on LTE
VHD Management
The following is a primer on managing virtual hard drives using Hyper-V manager. Virtual hard disk files are stored as either .vhd or .vhdx files which use .avhd and .avhdx differencing disks respectively for snapshots. Both formats support either fixed size or dynamically expanding. The .vhdx format is new as of Server 2012 and provides some improvements over the previous .vhd format including increased storage capacity.
For a list of changes in the VHDX format, see http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh831446.aspx
All examples are performed using Hyper-V 3.0 on Windows Server 2012 (minimum version required).
Physical to Virtual (P2V) Guide Using System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 SP1
This guide demonstrates how to virtualize a physical machine running Windows. It requires a VMM server managing at least one Hyper-V host available for placement. The physical machine must be connected to the same network as the Hyper-V host and the VMM server for successful conversion. Additionally, local or domain administrative credentials are required. The process is initiated from the VMM console and is completed using the wizard. Powershell script included.
Adding a Hyper-V host to a VMM Server
For VMM to be useful, you need to add servers to a host group for management. The easiest method, involves adding servers in a trusted domain using a ‘Run As’ account different from the account you use to log in to VMM. You can also add servers in untrusted domains or on a perimeter network, although this is slightly more involved. You can even provision a bare-metal host through a baseboard management controller. This guide will outline the steps of adding a host in the same domain, on the same network.
Migrate a virtual machine using System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012
Once you have gone through the lengthy and specific requirements to install and get VMM running (See http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg610592.aspx for all the requirements), added your physical servers to a host group for management, and configured networking ‘fabric’, you can use VMM to perform live migration between your servers running the same version of Hyper-V.
Note that starting in Hyper-V 3.0 VMM is no longer needed to perform live migration; they can be initiated directly in Hyper-V manager.
This guide assumes a pre-configured VMM, server, and network infrastructure (see the technet article for more information).
Continue reading Migrate a virtual machine using System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012
Performing Live Migration with Hyper-V Manager
After previously having to use System Center Virtual Machine Manager for live migration of VMs, it is now possible to set up Hyper-V 3.0 for live migration directly through the Hyper-V manager console.
Continue reading Performing Live Migration with Hyper-V Manager
Configuring Replication for Failover in Hyper-V 3.0 and Windows Server 2012
Here are some simple instructions on setting up your Hyper-V environment for failover. You will require at least 2 physical machines running Windows Server 2012 with the Hyper-V 3.0 Role installed. For this configuration they need to be members of the same domain and connected within the same subnet.
Continue reading Configuring Replication for Failover in Hyper-V 3.0 and Windows Server 2012
New Certification: MCSA Windows Server 2012 Charter Member
In the past, MCSA Charter Members were limited to the first 5000 recipients of the designation. Now, this has changed to 6 months after the certification is released.
From Microsoft’s website:
Continue reading New Certification: MCSA Windows Server 2012 Charter Member