Congratulations on reaching the end of the book! The skills and knowledge you’ve acquired in the previous chapters enable you to confidently—and safely—administer your production Hyper-V environment. We designed this book to allow you to start applying your new skills and knowledge as soon as possible, so that you, and your organization, can reap the benefits immediately.
This isn’t the end of your learning journey, though. As an IT professional, there is always something extra to learn—a new technology, a new version of Windows, or something to expand your basic knowledge set.
Many professions enforce the concept of continuing professional development (CPD), both to enhance their skill set and keep it up to date. The majority of IT professionals doesn’t seem to have embraced this concept. How many times have you heard “We’ve always done it this way.” IT is one of the fastest changing arenas in which to work. If you don’t keep up to date and broaden your skills, you’ll stagnate and, ultimately, adversely affect your career.
The dictum “you are responsible for your career” has never been truer, and in IT, the way to improve your professional prospects is to ensure that your skills are current. You know what you want to learn next and in which direction you want your working life to move. Organizations seem very reluctant to pay for training these days, so it’s up to you to learn the skills you need.
In this chapter, we’re going to suggest some ideas that you can use to build on what you’ve learned in this book and help take you to that next level, at which you become the “go-to person” in your organization. These aren’t mandatory, or meant to be exclusive, just a set of ideas about what else you should be thinking about.
Automation
We’ve yet to meet an administrator who has enough time to complete all the tasks that he or she is asked to perform. It’s more likely that your to-do list grows faster than you can reduce it. This is where automation enters the picture.
Automating repetitive and tedious tasks will free more of your time, allowing you to concentrate on those tasks that require you to think, for example, capacity planning (but automate the data-gathering process), upgrades, and the implementation of other new capabilities in your organization. When you start automating, pick a single process that takes a lot of your time and create the code to automate it. The code doesn’t have to be perfect, as long as it delivers the results you require and runs in a reasonable time frame. Once you’re happy with that code, move on and solve another problem. You can always revisit earlier projects as requirements or knowledge changes. Aim for automating as much as you can, rather than for the perfect piece of code.
PowerShell is the default automation engine and scripting language for the Windows platform. We’ve already introduced PowerShell as a way to perform Hyper-V administration tasks. The Hyper-V PowerShell cmdlets provide a command-line tool for administering Hyper-V and virtual machines (VMs). Nearly every Windows Server feature and role has a set of PowerShell cmdlets. Microsoft’s major products, such as Exchange, SharePoint, and SQL Server, together with products from many other vendors, also have PowerShell cmdlets available. This means that you can use one tool to manage your whole environment.
If you want to learn more about PowerShell, we recommend PowerShell in Depth, 2nd ed., by Don Jones, Jeffery Hicks, and Richard Siddaway (Shelter Island, NY: Manning Publications, 2014), which provides an excellent view across the breadth of PowerShell functionality. PowerShell in Action, 3rd ed., by Bruce Payette and Richard Siddaway (Shelter Island, NY: Manning Publications, 2017), provides a deeper view into how PowerShell works under the covers, and why it works the way it does.
PowerShell Documentation page: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell
Windows PowerShell documentation and help files: PowerShell v5.1, at https://docs.microsoft.com/en-gb/powershell/scripting/powershell-scripting?view=powershell-5.1 , PowerShell v6, at https://docs.microsoft.com/en-gb/powershell/scripting/powershell-scripting?view=powershell-6&viewFallbackFrom=powershell%3D5.1 , and PowerShell Team Blog, at https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/powershell/
If you require answers to get PowerShell-related questions, the forums at PowerShell.org are a good place to start. The PowerShell Summit, https://powershell.org/summit/, is an annual conference (and more) dedicated to PowerShell and DevOps. The recordings of many of the summit’s technical sessions are available through the preceding summit URL.
Windows Server Insider Previews
Windows 10 has had an Insider Preview program for a number of years. Under this program, you gain access to new builds during the process of developing the next semiannual update of Windows 10. The Insider Preview builds are a good way to test new functionality.
In 2017, Windows Server joined the Insider Preview program. You can test the latest functionality coming in a Semi-Annual Channel (SAC) or Long-Term Servicing Channel (LTSC) release. SAC releases are Server Core only; LTSC releases are Server Core and Server with Desktop Experience (GUI).
You can sign up for the program at https://insider.windows.com . The server builds and associated software can be downloaded from www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windowsinsiderpreviewserver .
Testing the latest builds in your lab will put you ahead of the curve in understanding the functionality in the next releases of Windows Server.
Windows Server Roles and Features
Active Directory and DNS
IIS
File servers
Windows Server Update Services (WSUS)
You should look for references that contain information on automating the respective features, as well as providing technical information. A good starting place to learn more about the other components of Windows Server is https://docs.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows-server/windows-server .
In this book, we’ve concentrated on Hyper-V as a feature of Windows Server. You can also get a “hypervisor only” version at https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh833684(v=ws.11).aspx . This is worth investigating as a component of your Hyper-V environment. The management tools you learned about in this book can be used to manage Hyper-V Server also.
Microsoft also has a virtual academy that contains free online courses on many aspects of Windows Server: https://mva.microsoft.com/ .
The Cloud
Many organizations are moving some, or all, of their infrastructure to the cloud. The cloud is essentially having your infrastructure—servers, storage, and networking—hosted on the Internet, rather than in your own datacenter. Combinations of on-premise and cloud-based hybrid infrastructures are continually being developed and released by the major vendors.
Microsoft’s Azure platform
Amazon Web Services
Rackspace
Other services, such as storage and databases, are available, in addition to infrastructure.
The hybrid solutions allow for the possibility of moving VMs from your datacenter to the cloud and vice versa, depending on the most cost-effective solution.
Cloud computing is rapidly evolving, and rather than supplying out-of-date information, we recommend that you investigate the current situation with one or more suppliers.
DevOps
DevOps is the merging of development and operations, to enable swift and painless delivery of applications. Hyper-V can be used as a foundation for using infrastructure as code (IaC), one of the basic principles of DevOps.
IaC takes the creation of infrastructure (VMs, storage, and networking) through automated processes (see the “Automation” section at the beginning of this chapter) and adds development activities, such as source control, versioning, and formalized testing, to the process. The goal is to be able to re-create your infrastructure and deploy the latest version of your application at the press of a button—up to several times a day, if required.
Many organizations don’t need that level of agility, and not all workloads are suitable for rebuilding multiple times per day. (We’d certainly NOT like to perform a Hyper-V or Exchange migration on a daily basis!) Even if you don’t adopt a full DevOps approach, there are certain aspects, such as configuration management, that could be useful to you and your organization. For example, configuration management tools can be used to automate the creation of new servers. Need a new domain controller? Then create a configuration that can be applied every time you create a domain controller, so you know that they are built automatically. You can also get your configuration-management tool to report on the configuration of the servers it controls, then correct configuration drift, if required.
PowerShell Desired State Configuration: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/PowerShell/dsc/overview
Chef: www.chef.io/
Puppet: https://puppet.com
A DevOps approach is not required by every organization, or even every application in the organization, but it is the way the industry is currently progressing.
DevOps is another rapidly evolving field for which we encourage you to research, adapt, adopt, and use to benefit your organization.