Tag: Azure Stack

Free eBook – How to Get the Most Out of Windows Admin Center – Second Edition.

If you have experience with the Windows Admin Center, you might already have deduced it is a powerhouse of functionality making light of important server management tasks. If you’re just adding it to your system administrator toolbox, welcome to the wonder of Windows Admin Center!

With so much functionality, figuring out where to focus is key. Whether you’re just setting out with Windows Admin Center or wanting to realize its full potential, start with Altaro’s free 160+ page second edition eBook, How To Get The Most Of The Windows Admin Center.  

Written by Microsoft Cloud & Datacenter Management MVP Eric Siron, it covers the latest developments like the Control Azure Stack HCI, use of WinRM over HTTPs and integration with Azure Monitor, amongst others. It’s a comprehensive guide on everything from installation methods and security considerations to integrating Windows Admin Center into an existing environment. There is even a brief history lesson along with a comparison to alternatives so you should get a solid overview of Windows Admin Center, why chose it and how to work with it.  

An all-new server management experience when it was introduced, Windows Admin Center modernized administrative activities with a centralized HTML 5 web application. Just add servers, clusters, desktops, and Azure virtual machines into a personalized, persistent interface, and manage their roles, features, software, registry, PKI certificates, and more. And with Microsoft’s latest investment into the Windows Admin Center and new functionality, there is now even more server management power to work with.

Learn to simplify and optimize your server management tasks

Download your free eBook now!

How to enable nested virtualization in Azure

We have already mentioned new Azure VM series Dv3 and Ev3 which enable running VMs inside Azure VMs or just nested virtualization. Today we are going to get it configured and to run our first nested VM in Azure.

But before we start, let’s review some Dv3 and Ev3 facts:

  • they introduce Hyper-Threading Technology running on the Intel® Broadwell E5-2673 v4 2.3GHz processor and Intel® Haswell 2.4 GHz E5-2673 v3
  • they made shift from physical core to virtual CPUs (thanks to HT technology) to support larger VM sizes
  • they are the first Azure VMs running on Windows Server 2016 hosts
  • Dv3 VMs are up to 64 vCPUs and 256 GB RAM
  • Ev3 VMs are up to 64 vCPUs and 432 Gb RAM
  • they are currently available only for certain regions (West Europe, US East, US West 2, Asia Pacific Southeast)
  • they already come with ExposeVirtualizationExtensions enabled. we don’t need to enable CPU extensions as we have to do for on-premises WS2016 hosts

To get started with “nesting” you need to create one or more Dv3/Ev3 VMs in Azure within compatible region. For quick demo purposes, I created D2S_V3  VM with Windows Server 2016 DC , standard managed disk with no data disks attached.

TIP: actually you can , for instance, create 2 or more VMs , add data disks and configure storage spaces between them to achieve higher IO performance.

Then you need to install Hyper-V role and restart VM to apply changes

Install-WindowsFeature Hyper-V -IncludeManagementTools -Restart

nested virtualization azure 1

Verify that Hyper-V role is installed and add internal switch. New adapter “vEthernet (switchname)” will be created under network connections list (ncpa.cpl)

Define a new IP address for this adapter (I’m using 192.168.0.0/24 subnet).  This network will be used as a NAT gateway for new VMs in order to allow internet access from nested VMs.

#Check Hyper-V role state
Get-WindowsFeature Hyper-V|ft InstallState, PostConfigurationNeeded

#Add new internal switch
New-VMSwitch -SwitchName "NSW01" -SwitchType Internal

# IP Configuration for vNIC
New-NetIPAddress -InterfaceAlias "vEthernet (NSW01)" -IPAddress 192.168.0.23 -PrefixLength 24

nested virtualization azure 2

Configure NAT rule to provide “access” to our nested VMs

New-NetNat -Name Nat_VM -InternalIPInterfaceAddressPrefix 192.168.0.0/24

image

Now our nested VMs can assign IP addresses from 192.168.0.0/24 subnet  (manual assignment). If you want to have dynamic IP assignment – create add. VM and configure DHCP. Continue reading “How to enable nested virtualization in Azure”

%d bloggers like this: