In the first three parts of this series I covered the project objectives and the system design, then turned my attention to the Hyper-V host image build. In this section I will look at automating deployment of that host operating system. This is lengthy, but there’s a lot to cover.
Tag: Windows Server 2008 R2
DCOM IIS WAMREG error 10016 with SharePoint 2010 on Windows Server 2008 R2
Taking a quick break from the SharePoint development series (I hope to finish part IV tonight), Matt Groves has a fix for a slightly more perturbing version of the DCOM IIS WAMREG 10016 error with SharePoint 2010 on Windows Server 2008 R2. His fix works a treat, but I’d recommend granting rights to the WSS_WPG and WSS_ADMIN_WPG local groups in order to make this a permanent fix.
Building a SharePoint 2007/2010 development environment – Part III: Host image build and performance benchmarks
Having agreed the project objectives and designed the system, I turned my attention to the Hyper-V host image build. This is a high-level build guide with start-up time and baseline memory consumption benchmarks at key milestones. These benchmark figures were taken from the Windows Server 2008 R2 Release Candidate build and are admittedly a bit imprecise. However, they do provide an overall indication of system performance as things were added to and removed from the installation. Although I do not have precise figures on RTM improvements, I spot-checked a few of these benchmarks when I rebuilt the system on RTM. Start-up times improved slightly at each milestone. In fact, the final benchmarks came in at 100MB less idle memory used in the RTM release. Continue reading “Building a SharePoint 2007/2010 development environment — Part III: Host image build and performance benchmarks”
Building a SharePoint 2007/2010 development environment – Part II: Design
In the first part of this series, I introduced the pros and cons of various SharePoint development approaches and the objectives of this system redesign. In this part I will focus on design choices and conclusions, starting with the core technology.
Why we’ve chosen Hyper-V
There are broadly five decisive factors: performance, management features (like snapshots), cost, 64-bit OS support and a full host OS (not just a virtualisation administration console): Continue reading “Building a SharePoint 2007/2010 development environment — Part II: Design”
Building a SharePoint 2007/2010 development environment – Part I: Introduction and Objectives
As I’ve alluded to a few times in this blog, over the last few months I’ve led the consultancy and system design for a SharePoint 2007/2010 development environment built on Hyper-V in Windows Server 2008 R2. This series of six posts will reveal the key decisions and will consolidate recommendations from a broad range of research and guidance. This first post offers a technology-agnostic introduction to the problem, pros and cons of alternative approaches and what we hoped to achieve with the new approach. The design decisions will be covered in more detail in the second post, followed by a deeper look at detailed build guidance. Continue reading “Building a SharePoint 2007/2010 development environment — Part I: Introduction and Objectives”
Summary of Mark Russinovich’s Inside Windows 7 Redux
This Channel 9 “going deep” interview with Mark Russinovich dives very deep in to kernel changes in Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2. I’ll do my best to summarise. It’s excellent stuff, illuminating:
More on routine loss of external network connectivity on Hyper-V hosts (not guests)
Further to my post from a few months ago on the this topic (dating back to the RC build), I’ve seen this same problem a few more times on the RTM build of Windows Server 2008 R2. My suggested approach still fixes the problem and it doesn’t recur, but I’ve still not been able to pin down a cause and I can find no documentation on host machine MAC assignments anywhere. Continue reading “More on routine loss of external network connectivity on Hyper-V hosts (not guests)”
Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 Federated Search
Federated Search is one of the most useful and interesting additions to MOSS 2007 since it was launched. It’s now been announced for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2.
Federated Search was integrated into MOSS 2007 with the post-SP1 Infrastructure Update, which effectively brought the Search Server 2008 product to the MOSS 2007 platform. Federated Search will pass a query from a single interface to multiple OpenSearch-compatible indices. It will then render matching results from these indices asynchronously as they return. In MOSS 2007 a federated search web part is added to a search results page and each web part renders only if results are found through that Search Connector. This works brilliantly, as local results will typically return first, then remote sources will render in due course.
This functionality has now been added to Windows Search. I think this is a fantastic move, as these choices will often be very preferential. I may want Wikipedia while you will want Britannica. I may roam among three branch offices and need to query each of the regional SharePoint portals. It’s very powerful stuff – especially when it moves to the client and can be configured to individual needs.
Find more Search Connectors on the Enterprise Search site. Read the Windows 7 Federated Search Provider Implementer’s Guide.
Disabling IPv6 on Server Core and Hyper-V Server
Note: this original KB article from which this guidance was taken has now been removed. Please see the comments below for more information.
I recently posted about the Conflicting Microsoft guidance on IPv6. While you can remove IPv6 from a NIC on a full installation of Windows Server 2008 by un-ticking the IPv6 box in the NIC properties (satisfying the Hyper-V performance guidance), you may have noticed that there’s no obvious way to disable IPv6 in server core or Hyper-V Server. If you looked in to it in a bit more detail you may have noticed a registry “fix” for this. Personally I’m always a bit skeptical of registry fixes until I see Microsoft recommending them, but now Tonyso has posted a link to a Microsoft KB article that endorses this approach (when necessary):
To completely disable IPv6 on a Windows Server 2008-based computer yourself, follow these steps:
- Open Registry Editor.
- Locate the following registry subkey:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMCurrentControlSetServicesTcpip6Parameters- In the details pane, click New, and then click DWORD (32-bit) Value.
- Type DisabledComponents, and then press ENTER.
- Double-click DisabledComponents, and then type 0xffffffff in Hexadecimal or 4294967295 in Decimal.Note The 0xffffffff value or the 4294967295 value disables all IPv6 components except for the IPv6 loopback interface.
A reboot is required before the change will take effect.
Hyper-V graphics performance is on the way… if you need a new laptop
Dell announced today that they are releasing Alienware and Studio laptops with Intel Core i7 processors. Why is this worth regurgitating? The Core i7 processors feature the Nehalem processor microarchitecture, which means that Hyper-V V2 (in Windows Server 2008 R2) can take advantage of SLAT (Second Level Address Translation). SLAT is implemented as EPT (Extended Paging Tables) in Intel technology and NPT (Nested Paging Tables) for AMD. Here’s Microsoft’s summary of the new Hyper-V support for SLAT: Continue reading “Hyper-V graphics performance is on the way… if you need a new laptop”