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Introductionhen you’re looking at testing a new IT solution—such as implementing a softwaredefined datacenter that includes virtualization, networking, and storage—the beststarting point is always to get advice from someone who has already done it. You can learnfrom experience what to do and what to avoid. That’s the idea behind this book. We’ve gonethrough the work of deploying Windows Server, Microsoft System Center, and the innovationsthat Microsoft Azure has brought to these technologies. Our goal is to give you the step-bystep benefit of our proof-of-concept implementation to save you time and effort. And wewant to show you how you can take advantage of innovation across the datacenter and thecloud to simplify your infrastructure and speed delivery of services to the business.Transforming the datacenterYou know that IT infrastructure matters. With the right platform, you can reduce costs, respondmore quickly to business needs, and take on the challenges of big data and mobility.IT today is under more pressure than ever before to deliver resources faster, support newbusiness initiatives, and keep pace with the competition. To handle these demands, you need aflexible, resilient infrastructure that is easy to manage and easy to scale. This means you needto be able to take everything you know and own today and transform those resources into asoftware-defined datacenter that is capable of handling changing needs and unexpectedopportunities.With Windows Server, Microsoft System Center, and Microsoft Azure, you can transformyour datacenter. Virtualization has enabled a new generation of more efficient and morehighly available datacenters for your most demanding workloads. Microsoft virtualizationsolutions go beyond basic virtualization capabilities, such as consolidating server hardware,and let you create a comprehensive software-defined compute engine for private and hybridcloud environments. This flexibility helps your organization achieve considerable cost savingsand operational efficiencies with a platform on which you can run the most demanding,scalable, and mission-critical of workloads.You can find a large part of those savings and some of the best options for simplifying thedatacenter in the area of storage. Microsoft’s software-defined storage (SDS) capabilitiesenable you to deploy low-cost, commodity hardware in a flexible, high-performance, resilientconfiguration that integrates well with your existing resources.Another area of savings and optimization is in networking innovation. With softwaredefined networking (SDN), you can use the power of software to transform your network intoa pooled, automated resource that can seamlessly extend across cloud boundaries. This allowsIntroductionix

optimal utilization of your existing physical network infrastructure, as well as agility andflexibility resulting from centralized control, and business-critical workload optimization fromdeployment of innovative network services. Virtual networks provide multitenant isolationwhile running on a shared physical network, ultimately allowing you to manage resourcesmore effectively, without the complexity associated with managing traditional networkingtechnologies such as Virtual Local Area Networks (VLANs).System Center provides the unified management capabilities to manage all of thisvirtualized infrastructure as a whole. This software-defined model lets you pool resources andbalance demand across all the different areas of the business, moving resources to the placeswhere you need them most, increasing agility and the overall value of IT to the business.Although the benefits of a software-defined datacenter are clear, designing andimplementing a solution that delivers the promised benefits can be both complex andchallenging. As with all new advances in technology, experienced architects, consultants, andfabric administrators often find it difficult to understand the components and concepts thatmake up a software-defined datacenter solution. We wrote this book to help.Who should read this book?You only have to perform a quick web search on “deploying Hyper-V,” “configuring StorageSpaces,” or “understanding Hyper-V Network Virtualization,” to realize that a wealth ofinformation is available across Microsoft TechNet, blogs, whitepapers, and a variety of othersources. The challenge is that much of that information is piecemeal. You’ll find an excellentblog post on configuring Storage Spaces, but the networking configuration used is vastlydifferent from the whitepaper you’ve found that guides you through configuring networkvirtualization. Neither of these sources align with a bare-metal Hyper-V deployment articleyou’ve been reading. The point here is that it’s difficult to find a single end-to-end resourcethat walks you through the deployment of the foundation of the Microsoft software-defineddatacenter solution, comprising software-defined compute, storage, and networking, from theracking of bare-metal servers, through to the streamlined deployment of virtual machines(VMs). This book does just that.Providing a POC deployment, this book gives the what, why, and the how of deploying thefoundation of a software-defined datacenter based on Windows Server 2012 R2 and SystemCenter 2012 R2. If you’re an IT professional, an infrastructure consultant, a cloud architect, oran IT administrator, and you’re interested in understanding the Microsoft software-defineddatacenter architecture, the key building blocks that make up the solution, the designconsiderations and key best practices, this book will certainly help you. By focusing on a POCscale, you can implement a solution that starts small, is manageable, and is easy to control yethelps you learn and understand why we chose to deploy in a certain way and how all of thedifferent pieces come together to form the final solution.xIntroduction

What topics are included in this book?This book, or proof-of-concept (POC) guide, will cover a variety of aspects that make up thefoundation of the software-defined datacenter: virtualization, storage, and networking. By theend, you should have a fully operational, small-scale configuration that will enable you toproceed with evaluation of your own key workloads, experiment with additional features andcapabilities, and continue to build your knowledge.The book won’t, however, cover all aspects of this software-defined datacenter foundation.The book won’t, for instance, explain how to configure and implement Hyper-V Replica, enableand configure Storage Quality of Service (QoS), or discuss Automatic Virtual MachineActivation. Yet these are all examples of capabilities that this POC configuration would enableyou to evaluate with ease. Chapter 1: Design and planning This chapter focuses on the overall design of thePOC configuration. It discusses each layer of the solution, key features andfunctionality within each layer, and the reasons why we have chosen to deploy thisparticular design for the POC. Chapter 2: Deploying the management cluster This chapter focuses on configuringthe core management backbone of the POC configuration. You’ll deploy directory,update, and deployment services, along with resilient database and VM managementinfrastructure. This lays the groundwork for streamlined deployment of the compute,storage, and network infrastructure in later chapters. Chapter 3: Configuring network infrastructure With the management backboneconfigured, you will spend time in System Center Virtual Machine Manager, buildingthe physical network topology that was defined in Chapter 2. This involvesconfiguring logical networks, uplink port profiles, port classifications, and networkadaptor port profiles, and culminates in the creation of a logical switch. Chapter 4: Configuring storage infrastructure This chapter focuses on deployingthe software-defined storage layer of the POC. You’ll use System Center VirtualMachine Manager to transform a pair of bare-metal servers, with accompanying justa bunch of disks (JBOD) enclosures, into a resilient, high-performance Scale-Out FileServer (SOFS) backed by tiered storage spaces. Chapter 5: Configuring compute infrastructure With the storage layerconstructed and deployed, this chapter focuses on deploying the compute layer thatwill ultimately host workloads that will be deployed in Chapter 6. You’ll use the samebare-metal deployment capabilities covered in Chapter 4 to deploy several Hyper-Vhosts and then optimize these hosts to get them ready for accepting virtualizedworkloads.Introductionxi

Chapter 6: Configuring network virtualization In Chapter 3, you will havedesigned and deployed the underlying logical network infrastructure and, in doingso, laid the groundwork for deploying network virtualization. In this chapter, you’lluse System Center Virtual Machine Manager to design, construct, and deploy VMnetworks to suit a number of different enterprise scenarios.By the end of Chapter 6, you will have a fully functioning foundation for a software-defineddatacenter consisting of software-defined compute with Hyper-V, software-defined storage,and software-defined networking.This book is focused on the steps to implement the POC configuration on your ownhardware. Where applicable, we have included detail on design considerations and bestpractices and extra detail on certain features and capabilities. These are intended to ensurethat you come away from this book with a rounded view of the what, why, and how when itcomes to deploying the foundation of a software-defined datacenter based on WindowsServer 2012 R2 and System Center 2012 R2.AcknowledgmentsThe authors would like to thank Jason Gerend, Jose Barreto, Matt Garson, and Greg Cusanzafrom Microsoft for providing valuable guidance and contributions for the content of this book.Without their expertise and guidance, this book would not be as thorough, detailed, andaccurate. Our sincere thanks go to them for their time and efforts in making this happen.The authors would also like to thank Karen Forster for proofing and copyediting theirmanuscript, Deepti Dani for her work on formatting and final layout, and Masood Ali-Huseinfor his reviewing work on this project.Free ebooks from Microsoft PressFrom technical overviews to in-depth information on special topics, the free ebooks fromMicrosoft Press cover a wide range of topics. These ebooks are available in PDF, EPUB, andMobi for Kindle formats, ready for you to download at:http://aka.ms/mspressfreeCheck back often to see what is new!xiiIntroduction

Errata, updates, & book supportWe’ve made every effort to ensure the accuracy of this book and its companion content. Youcan access updates to this book—in the form of a list of submitted errata and their relatedcorrections—at:http://aka.ms/HyperV1If you discover an error that is not already listed, please submit it to us at the same page.If you need additional support, email Microsoft Press Book Support atmspinput@microsoft.com.Please note that product support for Microsoft software and hardware is not offeredthrough the previous addresses. For help with Microsoft software or hardware, go tohttp://support.microsoft.com.We want to hear from youAt Microsoft Press, your satisfaction is our top priority, and your feedback our most valuableasset. Please tell us what you think of this book at:http://aka.ms/tellpressThe survey is short, and we read every one of your comments and ideas. Thanks in advancefor your input!Stay in touchLet's keep the conversation going! We're on Twitter: http://twitter.com/MicrosoftPress.Introductionxiii

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Design and planninghen it comes to implementing new technologies, especially those that will

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