Wednesday, November 22, 2017

Run Kubernetes Locally with Hyper-V on Windows Server 2016

Recently I have been working on a project which requires the use of Docker containers and the ability to scale out with services. Docker itself offers the ability to do this using Docker swarm. However, the development community overwhelmingly supports containerization using Kubernetes. Kubernetes is Google’s containerization platform that offers a rich set of features for scaling containerized applications. I like to do all my development on a multiple Windows virtual machines using Hyper-V. Some days I can have up to three virtual machines running with three different projects . Doing Docker development required Windows Server 2016 and I had no problem testing Docker swarm across multiple virtual machines. Trying to develop with Kubernetes locally on a Windows Server 2016 virtual machine was a different story. There is not a lot of information on how to accomplish this, in fact I could not come across any. Most of the information was doing it using Kubernetes Minikube on Windows 10 but not in a virtual machine. This post will give you all the steps you need to get Kubernetes Minikube to run on a Windows Server 2016 Hyper-V virtual machine.

Minikube

Google’s Minikube is the Kubernetes platform you can use to develop and learn Kubernetes locally. You can basically do anything with Minikube as you could if you were running it in Azure except load balance and scale out across nodes. Learn more about Minikube here. Minikube is run in its own virtual machine that runs Linux. So when you want to use it on a windows virtual machine you must enable Hyper-V. You are nesting virtual machines.  So here are the steps you need to take to get Minikube to run reliably on your Windows Server 2016 Hyper-V virtual machine.

 

Steps

Configure Nested Virtualization

The first thing you must do is enable nested virtualization on the Windows Server 2016 virtual machine you want to run Minikube on. You must do this from the host using PowerShell.

Set-VMProcessor -VMName  -ExposeVirtualizationExtensions $true 

Install Hyper-V Feature on the Windows Server 2016 Virtual Machine

Download the Latest Version of KubeCtl and Minikube for Windows

KubeCtl

Minikube

Copy both to the root C drive or the root drive you will be running PowerShell from. Rename the Minikube executable to Minikube. This will make it easier for you to execute Minikube commands in PowerShell.

Create a Virtual Switch for Minikube

Create a virtual switch to be used with the Minikube virtual machine using PowerShell

New-VMSwitch -Name VmNAT -SwitchType Internal

 

Assign an IP Address to the Virtual Switch Adapter

Get-NetAdapter "vEthernet (VmNat)" | New-NetIPAddress -IPAddress 192.168.137.1 -AddressFamily IPv4 -PrefixLength 24

 

Configure the Ethernet Microsoft Hyper-V Network Adapter

Internet Protocol 4 enabled
Hyper-V Extensible Virtual Switch disabled
Internet Protocol 4 has 8.8.8.8 as the preferred DNS server

Share this adapter with the virtual switch adapter setup for Minikube. This is found in the sharing tab.

Configure the Virtual Switch Ethernet Adapter

Internet Protocol 6 disabled

Reboot the Virtual Machine

Start Minikube

Start Powershell in administrator mode. Change the directory to the Root drive where Minikube.exe is located. Run the following Powershell.
 

.\minikube start --kubernetes-version="v1.8.0" --vm-driver="hyperv" --hyperv-virtual-switch="VmNAT" --v=7 --alsologtostderr

If all works you will see the message “kubectl is now configure to use the cluster”

To make sure all is working execute the following powershell

 

.\kubectl get pods --all-namespaces

If all is working you should see something like this.

Minikube and Windows Containers

So once this is all up an going you should be happy. Unfortunately, Minikube does not work with Windows containers yet. You can still run other linux containers to test and learn. Kubernetes and Windows containers are only supported in Azure. Another aggravation is when you either stop and restart Minikube or reboot the virtual machine, then Minikube stops working. It can no longer obtain an IPv4 address. This is from a recent bug in Windows Server 2016. You must disable and re-enable sharing the Ethernet adapter with the virtual switch adapter. Big pain. Below is a PowerShell script you can use at startup or just execute it after one of these scenarios. So I hope you find this useful. It took me a long time to get this to work consistently. I can only hope Minikube will support windows containers and this bug gets fixed.

# Register the HNetCfg library (do only once)
regsvr32 hnetcfg.dll


$m = New-Object -ComObject HNetCfg.HNetShare
$c1 = $m.EnumEveryConnection |? { $m.NetConnectionProps.Invoke($_).Name -eq "Ethernet" }
$c2 = $m.EnumEveryConnection |? { $m.NetConnectionProps.Invoke($_).Name -eq "vEthernet (VmNAT)" }
$config1 = $m.INetSharingConfigurationForINetConnection.Invoke($c1)
$config2 = $m.INetSharingConfigurationForINetConnection.Invoke($c2)
$config1.DisableSharing()
$config2.DisableSharing()
$config1.EnableSharing(0)
$config2.EnableSharing(1)

Monday, March 6, 2017

Tips for Better Content Searching in O365 Security and Compliance

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One of the new features in O365 Security and Compliance Center is the new Search and Investigation section. In this section you can do Audit log searches, eDiscovery cases and set up large content searches. Content searching allows an eDiscovery manager to search Exchange mail boxes, SharePoint Online sites and OneDrive for Business folders. This features enables large searches and allows manager to export the results up to 2TB. Quite impressive. I recently had the chance to use this feature and found a few problems with it. This post will give you some tips on how to use this feature more effectively.

Why Can’t I Use Custom Managed Properties?

Many companies when migrating to Office 365 have content types that have custom site columns. These site columns get auto generated managed properties during the search crawl.  So you may want to do a content search using one of them from the content search UI. This UI allows users to create, edit, bulk edit and delete searches. When you create or edit a search you are offered the choice to put a whole KQL query or just some keywords in the large text box. You can also combine the keywords with some conditions. The condition builder only allows combining the conditions with AND and is limited to a select group of managed properties. I recommend not trying to combine conditions with a complete KQL query. The biggest problem is you get an error message if you try to use one of the custom managed properties.

If you click OK to continue,  then Office 365 will execute the query, but it strips out the part of the KQL query containing the forbidden managed property. In the case above the search returns everything but still lists the forbidden KQL in the Query.

Always Use the Refinable Managed Properties

In order to use any custom managed properties make sure to map the corresponding crawled property to a compatible refinable managed property. Don’t bother with naming an alias to make your KQL queries more readable because they don’t work either. Using a built-in refinable managed property gets rid of the error message and the query executes correctly.

If your doing large content searches that you want to export the files then this is the tool for you. Unfortunately, this tool does not make it easy for companies to leverage their custom metadata to do targeted searching. Hopefully, this can be fixed soon.

Sunday, February 19, 2017

Multiple File Deployment for SharePoint Add-In Development with SPFastDeploy 3.7

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The SPFastDeploy Visual Studio extension allows you to make changes to a single file in your Add-In solution. Just right click on the file and have the changes automatically deployed without having to re-deploy the whole application. You won’t lose all your previously loaded list data and you won’t have to add your client app part back to the web part page. Saves a lot of time when developing Add-In model solutions.

Well recently I was working on some large SharePoint Add-In projects and I needed to upgrade some JavaScript  libraries. I noticed how tedious it was to right click on the item in the solution explorer and click “Fast Deploy to SP App” for each upgraded file. So I added the ability to select multiple files and deploy to your SharePoint Add-In solution when developing. Make sure to keep the debug output window open to make sure all the files you selected were deployed. Enjoy saving more time when writing code.