When Software Attacks!

Define Once, Deploy Everywhere (Sort of...)

Using Lability, DSC and ARM to define and deploy multi-VM environments Configuration as code crops up a lot in conversation these days. We are searching for that DevOps Nirvana of a single definition of our environment that we can deploy anywhere. The solution adopted at Black Marble by myself and my colleagues is not quite that, but it comes close enough to satisfy our needs. This document details the technologies and techniques we adopted to achieve our goal, which sounds simple, right?

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Thursday, March 2, 2017

Notes from the field: Using Hyper-V Nat Switch in Windows 10

The new NAT virtual switch that can be created on Windows 10 for Hyper-V virtual machines is a wonderful thing if you’re an on-the-go evangelist like myself. For more information on how to create one, see Thomas Maurer’s post on the subject. This post is not about creating a new NAT switch. It is, however, about _re_creating one and the pitfalls that occur, and how I now run my virtual environment with some hack PowerShell and a useful DHCP server utility.

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Friday, April 8, 2016

Generation 2 Virtual Machines on Windows 8.1 and Server 2012 R2 plus other nice new features

DDD North 2013 was a fantastic community conference but sadly I didn’t get chance to deliver my grok talk on Generation 2 virtual machines. A few people came up to me beforehand to say they were interested in the topic, and a few more spoke to me afterwards to ask if I would blog. I had planned to write a post anyway, but when you know it’s something people want to read you get a bit more of a push.

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Tuesday, October 15, 2013

Fixing Lab Manager environments with brute force

As you’ve probably seen, our Lab Manager/SCVMM 2008 R2 upgrade to SCVMM 2012 SP1 was not the smoothest in the world. The end result was a clean lab manager and SCVMM install, but a raft of virtual machines that had previously been part of environments. In tidying up, Richard and I learned a few things about picking apart VMs that were once part of an environment such that a new environment could be built form the wreckage.

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Tuesday, March 5, 2013

Things to remember when building virtual machines for a lab manager environment

As you will have read on both mine and Richard’s blogs, we have recently upgraded our Lab environment and it wasn’t the smoothest of processes. However, as always it has been a learning experience and this post is all about building VM environments that can be sucked into Lab and turned into a Lab environment that can be pushed out multiple times. Note: This article is all about virtual machines running on Windows Server 2012 that may have been built on Windows 8 and are managed by SCVMM 2012 SP1 and Lab Manager/TFS 2012 CU1.

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Tuesday, March 5, 2013