Windows Server 2012 Support

[David_Tocker]

Wow. I wonder if someone at HP heard the collective groaning around the world from people discovering that their P4000 does not work with 2012 at all.

Im sorry HP but that is appalling. Shameful. Really, really bad.

You have had -so- long to figure it out - there are no excuses.

As far as how this affects us - we cannot even begin to test our future production environments. We have been playing with 2012 for a year now and we are not one of Microsoft's major partners.

It would be really nice to be able to push our current testing enviroment over to 2012 from R2. But we can't.

Seriously, I am beginning to understand why my colleagues recommend Netapp, EMC, even Dell over HP storage.

In a more positive light, this is the first time I have seen HP put out a forward announcement re P4000.

Still no feature announcements, and I still have not been able to find anything concrete out though the distributor channels.

We are putting off the purchase of another 8 nodes for our hosting environment as we are starting to find management difficult doing -everything- manually. If we don't see some action soon we are just going to have to change, things are getting too hard.

It seems that even the 'lowly' P2000 has had an SMI-S provider released at some point. I would say that the P2000 is probably easier to create a provider for, but that is not really an excuse.

Those of us who were naive enough to board the P4000 boat hold our breath and wait...

I would really love to see someone from HP chip in and give us some information at least. As far as I can tell however they do not even monitor these forums.

[Northwoods]

The P2000 is an interesting fit providing up 10GB iscsi for fairly cheap. Works great for some DR & backup scenarios depending on the business size and can function as the primary SAN in small deployments.

All I know is before the next time we buy disk, we will be bringing in the competition and have a sitdown on what each of them offer and as it stands currently we are too small for 3PAR and the P4000 doesn't cut it...

[Bryan McMullan]

I've been doing initial tests with Window 2012 and my P4000 (9.5 fully patched) nodes. Just setup a few volumes using the 9.5 DSM and I can't see any issues so far. Threw a few tests loads at the volumes and they performed almost exactly as the 2008 R2 versions did.

I've not tested the VSS provider as of yet, but for base access...it seems to be working fine.

[David_Tocker]

Okay so far I have confirmed that neither the CMC or the FOM will run under 2012.
I was hoping to be able to fire up the 9.5 versions to do some testing and mucking around with 2012, but the FOM kernel panics and the CMC will not install at all - comes up with a 'gui console mode something something error'

So we wait.

[oikjn]

I upgraded my management server from R2 to 2012 when it already had CMC installed and it actually works.  Now I just tried to upgrade the CMC and during that process Java crashes and the process fails, but the existing CMC process works.  Guess the good news is it shouldn't be much for them to get an updated installed to work.  bad news is I'm guessing nothing is going to come until v10...  hope that comes soon

[David_Tocker]

Built a 2012 HV cluster today using some old G1 bl460s and a couple of p4300 g2 nodes.

Installed the 9.5 DSM, appears to work okay, some warnings - no failures.

Warns on 'validate storage spaces persistent reservation'

Passes on scsi-3 persistent reservation which is the important one.

Cannot get FOM to work under 2012 HV at all, and still buggered on the CMC.

Which is kind of funny as before my complains were about having to use the CMC due to a lack of SMI-S provider (still)

Now it would be nice just to have the **bleep** CMC back.

[Jorgen-E]

David, i also tested with 9.5 and all work ok but i get the same warning as you do on

Validate Storage Spaces Persistent Reservation

even with SAN I/Q 10.0 and DSM for MPIO 10.0 the error persist!

I was really waiting for this release .. support for Windows Server 2012.

I have set up a W2012 Hyper-V Cluster with CSV.

Upgraded to SAN I/Q 10.0 on the nodes, DSM for MPIO 10.0.0.1486.1 on the Hyper-V W2012 Hosts (3 DL360P G8 fully patched). But still, i get error when i validate storage cluster configuration against HP P4300 SAN.

Validate Storage Spaces Persistent Reservation

Test Disk 0 does not support SCSI-3 Persistent Reservations commands needed to support clustered Storage Pools. Some storage devices require specific firmware versions or settings to function properly with failover clusters. Please contact your storage administrator or storage vendor to check the configuration of the storage to allow it to function properly with failover clusters.

Hints anyone?

[erwin001]

Hi, did you get any information about the Validate Storage Spaces Persistent Reservation warning within the validation check?

I'm in the middle of building a new Windows Server 2012 Faiover Cluster for use with a SQL 2012 cluster. Cluster contains 2 Windows Server 2012 nodes, with the DS MPIO software.  I have a HP P4500G2 SAN consisting of 4 nodes.

The installed SAN I/Q version at this moment is version 9.5. I know version 10.5 gives support to Windows Server 2012, but reading your comment that you still  experience the Validate Storage Spaces Persistent Reservation warning, I'm not so sure if I really need to upgrade my steady SAN at this moment.

What did you do with your Failover Cluster? Did you proceed with installation or where you able to troubleshoot the Validate Storage Spaces Persistent Reservation warning? And did you experience any problems?

Also I found a article which could be interesting: http://www.hyper-v.nu/archives/hvredevoort/2011/01/array-firmware-as-a-limiting-factor-in-r2-clusters/ (Array firmware as a limiting factor in R2 clusters). It suggest to shorten the IQN name of the nodes. Tried this with the 2 Windows 2012 nodes but with no luck, Validate Storage Spaces Persistent Reservation warning still remains.

Thanks alot

Erwin

[oikjn]

just upgrade.  It is actually supported and works on v10.5 .  All the problems listed here are prior to the official supported version and that is why they are having problems.

v10.5 is stable and been around for a while now so there is no reason not to upgrade unless you don't have a support contract.

[richardsonkane]

• Installation is the basic concept of getting the new operating system on your hardware. Specifically, a clean installation requires deleting the previous operating system. For information about installing Windows Server 2012 R2, see System Requirements and Installation Information for Windows Server 2012 R2. For information about installing other versions of Windows Server, see Windows Server Installation and Upgrade.
• Upgrade means moving from your existing operating system release to a more recent release, while staying on the same hardware. For example, if your server is running Windows Server 2012, you can upgrade it to Windows Server 2012 R2. You can upgrade from an evaluation version of the operating system to a retail version, from an older retail version to a newer version, or, in some cases, from a volume-licensed edition of the operating system to an ordinary retail edition.
• License conversion in some operating system releases, you can convert a particular edition of the release to another edition of the same release in a single step with a simple command and the appropriate license key. We call this “license conversion.” For example, if you are running Windows Server 2012 R2 Standard, you can convert it to Windows Server 2012 R2 Datacenter.
• Migration means moving from your existing operating system to Windows Server 2012 R2 by transferring to a different set of hardware.
Converting a current evaluation version to a current retail version:
From an elevated command prompt, run slmgr.vbs /dlv; evaluation versions will include “EVAL” in the output.
• From the Start screen, open Control Panel. Open System and Security, and then System. View Windows activation status in the Windows activation area of the System page. Click View details in Windows activation for more information about your Windows activation status.
• If the server is a domain controller, you cannot convert it to a retail version. In this case, install an additional domain controller on a server that runs a retail version and remove AD DS from the domain controller that runs on the evaluation version.
• Read the license terms.
• From an elevated command prompt, determine the current edition name with the command DISM /online /Get-CurrentEdition. Make note of the edition ID, an abbreviated form of the edition name. Then run DISM /online /Set-Edition:<edition ID> /ProductKey:XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX /AcceptEula, providing the edition ID and a retail product key. The server will restart twice.
Converting a current retail version to a different current retail version:
At any time after installing Windows Server 2012, you can run Setup to repair the installation (sometimes called “repair in place”) or, in certain cases, to convert to a different edition.
You can run Setup to perform a “repair in place” on any edition of Windows Server 2012; the result will be the same edition you started with.
For Windows Server 2012 Standard, you can convert the system to Windows Server 2012 Datacenter as follows: From an elevated command prompt, determine the current edition name with the command DISM /online /Get-CurrentEdition. Make note of the edition ID, an abbreviated form of the edition name. Then run DISM /online /Set-Edition:<edition ID> /ProductKey:XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX /AcceptEula, providing the edition ID and a retail product key. The server will restart twice.
Converting a current volume-licensed version to a current retail version
At any time after installing Windows Server 2012, you can freely convert it between a volume-licensed version, a retail version, or an OEM version. The edition remains the same during this conversion.
To do this, from an elevated command prompt, run:
slmgr /ipk <key>
Where <key> is the appropriate volume-license, retail, or OEM product key.