HyperVoria

October Technet Magazine issue, dedicated to Virtualization

Bink — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 19:19:00 GMT

Click on titles to read articles online

Virtualization: An Introduction to Hyper-V in Windows Server 2008

The introduction of Hyper-V makes virtualization an even more compelling solution for IT environments. Get an overview of today’s virtualization market and see how Hyper-V improves the manageability, reliability, and security of virtualization Rajiv Arunkundram

Virtualization: Manage Your Virtual Environments with VMM 2008

System Center Virtual Machine Manager provides a consolidated interface for managing your virtual infrastructure. The latest version adds support for Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V, as well as for VMware virtual machines. Explore the new features and get an overview of using VMM to centralize your management tasks. Edwin Yuen

Virtualization: Getting Started with Microsoft Application Virtualization

Microsoft Application Virtualization (App-V) allows you to deliver virtualized desktops to client systems throughout your organization. This simplifies system management and liberates employees from their desktops. Take a close look at how App-V works and discover how you can deploy it in your organization. Anthony Kinney

Virtualization: Achieving High Availability for Hyper-V

Consolidating servers onto fewer physical machines has many advantages, but it is extremely important that you plan for your systems to be highly available. Here’s a guide to using Windows Server 2008 Failover Clustering to bring high availability to your Hyper-V virtual machines. Steven Ekren

Virtualization: Backup and Disaster Recovery for Server Virtualization

Virtualization brings significant changes to disaster recovery. Here’s an introduction to how the Microsoft virtualization platform factors into your disaster recovery plan, as well as a deeper look into backup and restore options and considerations for Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V. Adam Fazio

Virtualization: Essential Tools for Planning Your Virtual Infrastructure

Is your infrastructure ready for virtualization? The Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit, a network-wide infrastructure assessment tool, can help you better understand your IT infrastructure and determine whether your systems are ready for upgrade or migration to a variety of technologies, including virtualization. Jay Sauls and Baldwin Ng

Columns

From the Editor: It’s a Virtual(ized) World Joshua Hoffman
Letters: Readers Speak Out	Toolbox: New Products for IT Pros Greg Steen	SQL Q&A: Large Transaction Logs, When to Use Repair, and More In this installment, Paul Randal answers questions about backing up and restoring, looks at the differences between log shipping and database mirroring, and explains why the Repair function should only be used as a last resort. Paul S. Randal
Utility Spotlight: Offline Virtual Machine Servicing Tool Virtual machines that are stored offline don’t automatically receive the necessary updates to keep them safe and compliant. This, in turn, can pose a risk to your entire IT environment. Find out how the free Offline Virtual Machine Servicing Tool lets you automate the process of updating virtual machines. Peter Skjøtt Larsen and Suveen Kumar Reddy Vuppala	Windows PowerShell: The Power of Profiles Ever wish Windows PowerShell would launch with a work environment tailored to your needs? Don Jones demonstrates how you can use profiles to customize the Windows PowerShell shell. Don Jones	Hey, Scripting Guy!: Famous Last Words The Scripting Guys discuss Socrates and revisit the topic of querying an XML file . This time, however, the XML file is structured so that rather than using child nodes, additional property values are configured as attributes. The Microsoft Scripting Guys
The Desktop Files: Customizing Windows Deployment Services Wes Miller delves into Windows Deployment Services, showing you how you can customize and configure WDS to meet the needs of your organization. Wes Miller	Security Watch: Revisiting the 10 Immutable Laws of Security, Part 1 It's been about 8 years since "The 10 Immutable Laws of Security" were first published, and a lot has changed since then. This month, Jesper Johansson kicks off a three-part series in which he analyzes the laws from today's perspective to see if they still hold true. Jesper M. Johansson	Field Notes: High-Capacity Color Bar Code Gavin Jancke has developed a new bar code, using colors and triangles, that has much higher data capacity than traditional black and white bar codes. Take a closer look at these high-capacity color barcodes. Gavin Jancke
Windows Confidential: Work Harder, Not Smarter Raymond Chen looks at the skewed relationship bugs have to errors, and explains why it's important that programmers suffer as well as give results. Raymond Chen

Internet Explorer Application Compatibility VPC Image 4.0

Bink — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 08:18:00 GMT

This download page contains four separate VPC images, depending on what you want to test.

IE6-XPSP3_VPC.exe contains a Windows XP SP3 with IE6 VHD file
IE7-XPSP2_VPC.exe contains a Windows XP SP2 with IE7 VHD file
IE8B2-XPSP3_VPC.exe contains a Windows XP SP3 with IE8 Beta 2 VHD file
IE7-VIS1.exe+IE7-VIS2.rar+IE7-VIS3.rar contain a Vista Image with IE7 VHD file.

Note: For The Vista image, you will need all three files, downloaded and in the same directory, then simply run IE7-VIS1.exe.

This VPC image will expire in January, 2009.

Download At Source

Hyper-V in September

Bink — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 21:51:00 GMT

Hans Vredevoort:

Last Monday I was able to join an exclusive roundtable meeting with several of Microsoft's most intimate infrastructure partners promoting Microsoft Virtualization. We had the honor to interact with Zane Adam (Senior Director Virtualization Marketing) and Radhesh Balakrishnan (Director Virtualization Server and Tools Division) from Microsoft Corporate in Redmond. The intention of the meeting was to explain how Microsoft looks at virtualization. We were not only talking about the Hyper-V hypervisor, but Microsoft Virtualization in its broadest context: Server Virtualization (Hyper-V), Application Virtualization (App-V, a.k.a. SoftGrid), Desktop Virtualization (let's call it MS VDI for now), Presentation Virtualization (Terminal Services), the latest acquisition Kidaro (Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualization Med-V), as well as the System Center family of management products that includes Virtual Machine Manager (VMM).

If there is one major reason for not using VMware or at least using Hyper-V alongside VMware, it is the comprehensive management approach of the Microsoft Virtualization and System Center management portfolio.
See: http://www.microsoft.com/virtualization/products.mspx.
Physical and virtual servers are rightly treated as equals. In the VMware world, the focus of management is on virtual servers only, so customers have to buy at least two management suites. Microsoft, based on IDC estimates, expects that nearly 50% of all new physical servers shipped will be virtualized by 2011. That leaves us with more physical servers than we can handle. It would be very uneconomical to have separate management suites to keep track of both virtual and physical servers. Many customers will welcome the opportunity to also consolidate the number of server management suites.

Microsoft envisions that large enterprises will use several hypervisors. The new version of Microsoft Virtual Machine Manager 2008 allows seamless management of heterogeneous hypervisors, starting with Hyper-V and VMware ESX. For backward compatibility Virtual Server is also supported. Apart from the unique proposition of multi-vendor virtualization management, the Microsoft solution is extremely cost efficient for customers who use both the Hyper-V and System Center management offerings. This is unmatched by VMware and others in the market. I expect a lot of customers will be planning to take advantage of this. The month of September is about to reveal more on this.

The soon to release version of System Center Virtual Machine Manager (VMM2008) combined with other System Center modules like Operations Manager, Configuration Manager and Data Protection Manager, are precisely aimed at achieving a well sounding symphony of physical and virtual server management.

I was able to discuss a number of important issues with the Microsoft Virtualization directors.

To mention a few:

1.Vendor NIC Teaming like the HP Network Configuration Utility is currently not working correctly with Hyper-V as a result of the different way the Hyper-V management partition communicates with the network drivers. I was told that Microsoft is well aware of this and is looking into it. It takes two to tango in this case which might complicate things working towards a quick fix.
2.VMware's claim that VM density per host (ratio VM's per host) is 30% better than Hyper-V, is perceived as merely a theoretical advantage. In reality VMware production environments memory overcommit is often not used because of the negative performance impact. Besides Microsoft will make memory usage a lot more dynamic in future versions.
3.In a previous blog I suggested Microsoft implemented something like a clustered file system for easier disk allocation in clustered Hyper-V hosts. Something comparable to the SanBolic product which implements its solution as an installable file system. Microsoft is working with SanBolic and others so customers can use the partner solution for this purpose as it integrates well with Hyper-V and Windows Server. I guess it will be the basic ingredient for Live Migration.
4.On the topic of Live Migration, Microsoft actually refers to VMotion as Live Migration in its new Virtual Machine Manager 2008, we can be sure that this important functionality for enterprises will be in the next version of Hyper-V. During the Microsoft Virtualization kickoff launch in September we mighthear more on the subject.
5.Virtual HBA is apparently not around the corner and will require more extensive testing. Early implementations of HBA vendors still have some trouble getting the security of the SCSI protocol right.
6.In between different Hyper-V versions, we sawan important update to Hyper-V failover functionality in Windows Server 2008 failover clusters.This was packaged as a QFE. See: http://support.microsoft.com/?id=951308. Although Microsoft was eager collecting feedback from us, no new similar updates should be expected in the short term. Nevertheless, the month of September might again disclose new Hyper-V secrets? We will just have to wait a few weeks.

Continue At Source !!

Microsoft delays the Hyper-V Integration Components for Linux, removes the RC version

Bink — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 21:23:00 GMT

Microsoft supports one flavor of Linux as guest OS in Hyper-V: Novell SUSE Enterprise Linux 10. But to work properly inside the virtual machine Linux needs additional components that Microsoft releases under the name of Linux Integration Components.

This package includes the Linux implementation of the Hyper-V VMBus (the same high performance interface that Windows 2003/2008 guest OSes use), the pass-through drivers for network and storage, and some other things.

Microsoft developed this software separately from Hyper-V and while the latter is already available, the Linux Integration Components are not.
They were expected last month but the company postponed its release without adding details.

Customers can still install Novell Linux as Hyper-V guest OS but it lacks all the enhancements that makes SUSE the best companion for Windows on the new hypervisor.
Without Integration Components the distribution performs just any other, from Red Hat Enterprise Linux to Ubuntu.

For unknown reasons Microsoft also removed the previous version, frozen at Release Candidate 2 milestone since July 11.
This implies that at the moment there’s no way to run a Linux guest OS at its best.

Continue At Source

Licensing Microsoft Server Products in Virtual Environments

Bink — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 10:58:00 GMT

The purpose of this white paper is to give an overview of Microsoft® licensing models for the server operating system and server applications under virtual environments. It can help you understand how to use Microsoft server products with virtualization technologies, such as Microsoft Hyper-V^TM technology, Microsoft® Virtual Server 2005 R2, or third-party virtualization solutions provided by VMWare and Parallels.

Although much of the information in this white paper also applies to licenses purchased from channels other than Microsoft Volume Licensing, some differences exist. As a result, we recommend that you review the license terms that accompanied your software if you acquired licenses through a means other than a Microsoft Volume Licensing agreement.

This white paper replaces the "Licensing Microsoft Server Products with Virtual Machine Technologies" documents-White Paper and Brief published in October 2006.

Download: Licensing Microsoft Server Products in Virtual Environments (Word file, 2 MB)

Microsoft Support Policies and Recommendations for Exchange Servers in Hardware Virtualization Environments

Bink — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 08:44:00 GMT

the Microsoft support policies for running currently supported versions of Microsoft Exchange Server in production in a hardware virtualization environment. This topic also provides recommendations for running Exchange Server in production in a hardware virtualization environment.

Hardware virtualization software enables you to run multiple, separate operating systems concurrently on a single physical machine. Microsoft has the following three software offerings that provide hardware virtualization functionality:

Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V Technology/Microsoft Hyper-V Server Windows Server 2008 provides 64-bit virtualization technology called Hyper-V. Hyper-V is a hypervisor: a layer of software that sits just above the hardware and beneath one or more operating systems. For more information about Hyper-V, see Virtualization and Consolidation with Hyper-V.
Microsoft Virtual Server Virtual Server is software that provides server virtualization technology that was engineered for the Windows Server System platform (Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2003 R2). For more information about Microsoft Virtual Server, see the Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 Product Overview.
Microsoft Virtual PC Virtual PC is software that lets you create separate virtual machines on your Microsoft Windows desktop, each of which virtualizes the hardware of a physical computer. For more information about Virtual PC, see Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 Product Information.

Third parties also provide hardware virtualization functionality. For details about the Microsoft support policy for third-party hardware virtualization software, see:

Microsoft supports Exchange Server 2007 in production on hardware virtualization software only when all the following conditions are true:

The hardware virtualization software is Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V technology, Microsoft Hyper-V Server, or any third-party hypervisor that has been validated under the Windows Server Virtualization Validation Program.
The Exchange Server guest virtual machine:
- Is running Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 with Service Pack 1 (SP1) or later.
- Is deployed on the Windows Server 2008 operating system.
- Does not have the Unified Messaging server role installed. All Exchange 2007 server roles, except for the Unified Messaging role, are supported in a virtualization environment.

The storage used by the Exchange Server guest machine can be virtual storage of a fixed size (for example, fixed virtual hard drives (VHDs) in a Hyper-V environment), SCSI pass-through storage, or Internet SCSI (iSCSI) storage. Pass-through storage is storage that is configured at the host level and dedicated to one guest machine.

Note:
In a Hyper-V environment, each fixed VHD must be less than 2,040 gigabytes (GB). For supported third-party hypervisors, check with the manufacturer to see if any disk size limitations exist.

Virtual disks that dynamically expand are not supported by Exchange.
Virtual disks that use differencing or delta mechanisms (such as Hyper-V's differencing VHDs or snapshots) are not supported.

No other server-based applications, other than management software (for example, antivirus software, backup software, virtual machine management software, etc.) can be deployed on the physical root machine. The root machine should be dedicated to running guest virtual machines.
Microsoft does not support combining Exchange clustering solutions (namely, cluster continuous replication (CCR) and single copy clusters (SCC)) with hypervisor-based availability or migration solutions (for example, Hyper-V's quick migration). Both CCR and SCC are supported in hardware virtualization environments provided that the virtualization environment does not employ clustered virtualization servers.
Some hypervisors include features for taking snapshots of virtual machines. Virtual machine snapshots capture the state of a virtual machine while it is running. This feature enables you to take multiple snapshots of a virtual machine and then revert the virtual machine to any of the previous states by applying a snapshot to the virtual machine. However, virtual machine snapshots are not application-aware, and using them can have unintended and unexpected consequences for a server application that maintains state data, such as Exchange Server. As a result, making virtual machine snapshots of an Exchange guest virtual machine is not supported.
Many hardware virtualization products allow you to specify the number of virtual processors that should be allocated to each guest virtual machine. The virtual processors located in the guest virtual machine share a fixed number of logical processors in the physical system. Exchange supports a virtual processor-to-logical processor ratio no greater than 2:1. For example, a dual processor system using quad core processors contains a total of 8 logical processors in the host system. On a system with this configuration, do not allocate more than a total of 16 virtual processors to all guest virtual machines combined.

Performance and Scalability Considerations

Continue At Source

Vmware does sign the Microsoft Virtualization Validation Program

Bink — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 08:42:00 GMT

Virtualization.info writes:

Microsoft has announced that two new vendors are participating this program: VMware and Cisco.

(note: VMware doesn’t appear nor in the press announcement neither in the official SVVP page because of a late confirmation)

While a notable achievement, the fact that VMware signed for the SVVP shouldn’t surprise anyone but the presence of Cisco is something truly unexpected.

Full Story At Source

New Microsoft Licensing and Support Eases Path to Virtualization

Bink — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 16:12:00 GMT

Customers “Get Virtual Now” with increased flexibility and broader support when virtualizing Microsoft server applications.

REDMOND, Wash. — Aug. 19, 2008 — New licensing, expanded product support policies and a worldwide series of events from Microsoft Corp. help business customers create more dynamic datacenters and enterprise IT systems with virtualization software. Beginning Sept. 1, 2008, customers will be able to move any of 41 Microsoft server applications between servers within a server farm as often as necessary without paying additional licensing fees, and they can take advantage of expanded specialized technical support.

“Businesses are taking steps to make their IT operations more dynamic and are delving into virtualization as a cornerstone strategy,” said Zane Adam, senior director of integrated virtualization in the Server and Tools Business at Microsoft. “Microsoft recognizes this and is innovating its licensing policies, product support and a wide range of IT solutions to help customers get virtual now.”

To highlight the recent innovations in virtualization, Microsoft also will begin a worldwide series of “Get Virtual Now” events this month that will showcase Microsoft virtualization products and partner solutions, reaching more than 250,000 IT professionals.

New Licensing Flexibility

Microsoft is updating its software licensing terms for 41 server applications, including Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Enterprise edition, Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 1 Standard and Enterprise editions, Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Enterprise and Professional editions, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, and Microsoft System Center products. With the new terms, the company is waiving its previous 90-day reassignment rule, allowing customers to reassign licenses from one server to another within a server farm as frequently as needed. For many customers, the change will reduce the number of licenses they need to support their IT systems, increase agility, and simplify the tracking of application instances or processors because customers now can count licenses by server farm instead of by server.

“IDC research is finding that the use of server virtualization is moving past the early adopter stage and is quickly becoming a mainstream solution,” said Al Gillen, research vice president for system software at IDC. “As IT professionals update their standard server images for new installations, they are increasingly integrating virtualization to simplify deployments, to increase the system flexibility, boost usage rates and increase portability of the applications. With this latest update to its licensing rules, Microsoft is knocking down barriers to virtualized deployments, which should help further accelerate the adoption rates.”

Expanded Technical Support

Microsoft has updated its technical support policy for 31 server applications so that customers can receive technical support when deploying those applications on Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V, Microsoft Hyper-V Server or any other third-party validated virtualization platform. Now customers can get the same level of product support in a virtualized environment that they are accustomed to with nonvirtual environments. More information is available at http://support.microsoft.com.

To enable this support policy, Microsoft launched the Server Virtualization Validation Program in June 2008. The program is open to any software vendor to test and validate its virtualization software to run Windows Server 2008 and previous versions of Windows Server. To date, Cisco Systems Inc., Citrix Systems Inc., Novell Inc., Sun Microsystems Inc. and Virtual Iron Software Inc. are participating in the program.

“Technical support of virtualized images is an industrywide challenge,” said Roger Levy, senior vice president and general manager of open platform solutions at Novell. “Novell and Microsoft continue to collaborate to optimize bidirectional virtualization between Windows Server and SUSE Linux Enterprise with Xen. Microsoft’s Server Virtualization Validation Program provides customers with additional peace of mind when they run Windows as a guest in a validated environment such as SUSE Linux Enterprise.”

Microsoft Worldwide Events Help Customers Get Virtual Now

This month, Microsoft begins a worldwide series of events designed to educate more than 250,000 IT professionals on Microsoft virtualization products, deployment tools and partner solutions. The series of more than 100 events started Aug. 3 in South Africa, continues Sept. 8 with a U.S. kickoff event and eventually will cover more than 50 other countries. The U.S. “Get Virtual Now” event will feature Microsoft executives Bob Muglia, senior vice president of the Server and Tools Business; Kevin Turner, chief operating officer; and Bob Kelly, corporate vice president of infrastructure server marketing within the Server and Tools Business. More than 40 sponsoring partners will be in attendance, including Platinum sponsors Advanced Micro Devices Inc., Citrix Systems, Compellent Technologies Inc., Dell Inc., Hitachi Data Systems Corp., HP, IBM Corp., Intel Corporation, Juniper Networks Inc., NetApp, Novell and Sun Microsystems. More information about the events and registration is available at https://www.getvirtualnow.com.

Introducing SCVMM 2008 Performance & Resource Optimization

Bink — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 19:09:00 GMT

PRO stands for Performance & Resource Optimization, which:

Is a powerful and valuable feature as the result of integration between SCOM (OpsMgr) and SCVMM;
Is a software package that leverages the System Center Operations Manager framework, which enables Microsoft partners (software and hardware vendors) to deliver value-added service and solution to our mutual customers;
Contains a connector piece that accelerates the communications between OpsMgr and SCVMM, and management packs with specific policies that VMM is called to take actions on;
Provides values of minimizing downtime, accelerating time to resolution, and, for advanced users with carefully designed policies, achieving self-healing / auto-recovery / hands-free management experience;

How does it work?

To explain how PRO works, let me use a simulated scenario to describe the system behaviours and the user experience.

From the slide below, you can see how VMM PRO reacts to the event that is monitored and reported by OpsMgr:

Assume that we have a three-node cluster with some HA VMs running on each, and the cluster is managed by a VMM server integrated with OpsMgr.
When the resources of a VM peak out on host #1 below on the very left, OpsMgr detects the defined threshold is reached and immediately notifies SCVMM.
A PRO tip pops up on the SCVMM admin console.
Depending on your setting, either manual or auto approval of the action recommended (in this case, Move-VM) would move the VM to the highest rated host (per our intelligent placement), in this case, the host server in the middle with the least load.

Continue At Source

Reducing the Server Core disk footprint

Bink — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 15:20:00 GMT

In the Server Core installation option, there is a way to remove the server roles and optional features from the disk, to free up more space. In addition to reducing disk usage, this could be used to ensure an administrator doesn’t add a role or feature to a server that is supposed to perform a fixed function.

Warning: This is a one way operation, once you remove a role or feature there is NO way to bring it back. If you realize later that you need the role or feature the only option is to reinstall.

To do this:

1. Run: pkgmgr /up:<package to remove>

2. Reboot – you can remove multiple packages before rebooting.

3. Wait about 30 minutes for the disk cleanup to occur.

You will then see the disk space used by the role or feature is freed up, oclist will no longer show the role or feature as being available, and trying to install it using ocsetup will result in an error. Once again, read the warning above – there is no way to put the role or feature back, it is permanently gone from the system.

The role and feature packages available for removal are:

· Microsoft-Hyper-V-Package~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~~6.0.6001.18000

· Microsoft-Windows-BLB-Package~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~~6.0.6001.18000

· Microsoft-Windows-DFSN-ServerCore~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~~6.0.6001.18000

· Microsoft-Windows-DFSR-ServerEdition-Package~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~~6.0.6001.18000

· Microsoft-Windows-DhcpServerCore-Package~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~~6.0.6001.18000

· Microsoft-Windows-DirectoryServices-ADAM-SrvFnd-Package~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~~6.0.6001.18000

· Microsoft-Windows-DirectoryServices-DomainController-SrvFnd-Package~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~~6.0.6001.18000

· Microsoft-Windows-DNS-Server-Core-Role-Package~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~~6.0.6001.18000

· Microsoft-Windows-FailoverCluster-Core-Package~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~~6.0.6001.18000

· Microsoft-Windows-FileReplication-Package~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~~6.0.6001.18000

· Microsoft-Windows-IIS-WebServer-Core-Package~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~~6.0.6001.18000

· Microsoft-Windows-Internet-Naming-Service-SC-Package~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~~6.0.6001.18000

· Microsoft-Windows-MultipathIo-Package~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~~6.0.6001.18000

· Microsoft-Windows-NetworkLoadBalancingHeadlessServer-Package~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~~6.0.6001.18000

· Microsoft-Windows-NFS-ServerFoundation-Package~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~~6.0.6001.18000

· Microsoft-Windows-Printing-ServerCore-Package~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~~6.0.6001.18000

· Microsoft-Windows-QWAVE-Package~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~~6.0.6001.18000

· Microsoft-Windows-RemovableStorageManagementCore-Package~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~~6.0.6001.18000

· Microsoft-Windows-SecureStartup-OC-Package~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~~6.0.6001.18000

· Microsoft-Windows-SNMP-SC-Package~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~~6.0.6001.18000

· Microsoft-Windows-SUA-Core-Package~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~~6.0.6001.18000

· Microsoft-Windows-Telnet-Client-Package~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~~6.0.6001.18000

If you are running on an x86 box, change the amd64 above to x86.

In addition to the roles and features listed in oclist, it is also possible to remove IME support as well as the supporting fonts by removing the following packages:

· Microsoft-Windows-ServerCore-EA-IME-Package~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~~6.0.6001.18000

· Microsoft-Windows-ServerCore-EA-Fonts-Package~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~~6.0.6001.18000

Removing these will reduce the on disk footprint by ~200MB.

Full Story At Source

Delegation Model in Hyper-V – Part 6

Bink — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 09:27:00 GMT

In previous posts, I have shown how to create Azman scopes and roles to delegate administration of Hyper-V virtual machines to domain users. Now that we have an AzMan scope, let’s see how you can apply it to a virtual machine or set of virtual machines.

Note: In Hyper-V, there is no GUI interface to assign a scope to a VM, you need to use the Hyper-V WMI API

In my example scenario, I have a set of VMs prefixed with “01_”and I want to delegate administration of those VMs to Student01 and only this account can view those VMs in Hyper-V mmc console. In Prt 4 and Part 5, I already created a scope called 01_Scope and some role definitions. Let’s apply this cope to 01_ VMs.

Script

$VM_Service = get-wmiobject -namespace root\virtualization Msvm_VirtualSystemManagementService

$ListofVMs =get-wmiobject -namespace root\virtualization Msvm_ComputerSystem -filter "ElementName <> Name " | `
where { $_.ElementName -like "01_*"}

foreach ($VM in $ListofVMs) {
        if ( $VM -ne $Null)
        {
        $VMGlobalSetting = get-wmiobject -namespace root\virtualization Msvm_VirtualSystemGlobalSettingData | where `
           { $_.ElementName -like "*$($VM.ElementName)*" }

         $VMGlobalSetting.ScopeOfResidence = “01_Scope”

$VM_Service.ModifyVirtualSystem($VM.__PATH, $VMGlobalSetting.psbase.Gettext(1))

}

}

Full Story At Source

Microsoft Takes First Chunk of Virtualization Market

Bink — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 19:10:00 GMT

Paul Thurrott: Hyper-V is so new we haven't completely taken off the shrinkwrap yet, but Microsoft has already seized a healthy chunk of the virtualization market. The software giant now owns 13 percent of that market, compared to 82 percent for market leader VMWare, according to analysts at IDC. (Open source virtualization solution Xen came in third with 3 percent.) To put this number in perspective, think about how successful everyone tells you that Apple with the Mac, and then remember that the 13 percent figure is over four times higher than the Mac's market share in the PC market and twice as high as the Mac's market share in its most successful market by far, the US. Yeah, I did just make that comparison. Deal with it.

Dell PRO Pack on SCVMM 2008

Bink — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 09:45:00 GMT

Dell Virtualization Engineering Team
Download .WMV file ~13.6MB
This demo shows the Dell Performance and Resource Optimization (PRO) Pack being used on Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) 2008 during a simulated power failure..

MaximumASP and Hyper-V

Bink — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 09:42:00 GMT

GuestPost at MS Virtualization Team blog:

Hi, my name is Dominic Foster, Chief Technology Officer at MaximumASP, which is a web hosting and IT services provider that sells/markets/services Microsoft technologies to the SMB business market.

A core element of the MaximumASP business model is a complete commitment to exclusively offering hosting solutions that deliver Microsoft technologies. This overall market and product focus has been the leading success factor in our growth over the past eight years.

Server consolidation was a very appealing aspect of virtualization - it quite simply allows us to reduce the amount of physical machines in our datacenter. This consolidation gives us greater utilization on our hardware and reduces costs on machines, licensing, and power. Reducing the amount of our physical servers in the datacenter also means less power and cooling costs and lower overall total energy consumption.

Virtualization also gives us the flexibility and scalability we need to make smooth changes to the underlying infrastructure with minimal impact on systems or applications.

During our research we found the TCO of Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V with System Center to be a less expensive solution than a similar toolset from VMware. Being completely manageable by System Center allowed us the flexibility to use the same management tools for both Hyper-V and physical servers. An added benefit was the consistent Microsoft look and feel for System Center so there was not the typical steep learning curve associated with a new toolset. Strong support from Microsoft and the MVP program facilitated our quick adoption of Hyper-V.

It was important for us to be involved in the Hyper-V Go Live program to get access to resources and contacts that could help us bring our solution to market faster. It was also an opportunity to connect with Microsoft to allow us to get our questions answered, and brainstorm our ideas. We've been able to get our questions answered, and/or routed to the product team. We've been able to connect with technical, and marketing Microsoft contacts that help us further develop relationships in one of our 'core' competencies and focus areas.

In May of 2008 we dispatched a virtualization survey to 2,313 customers and received a 10% response rate. The response was overwhelmingly positive with 79% of respondents saying they would consider running their web applications on a virtual server.

Here are some open ended comments from the survey:

"Being able to store a configured image of a machine and just click-and-drag that image into reality is earth shattering. Deploying virtual SANs, load balancers, and firewalls for pennies on the dollar would give my company a real advantage in our niche."
"The line between software and hardware is becoming increasingly blurry. Companies like mine must leverage these innovations or yield market to those who can."

Virtualization will continue to be a major focus for us, not only for reasons of consolidation and reduction in operating costs, but also to enable more rapid deployment of new application servers, reduced down time for server maintenance, to reduce driver dependencies for new hardware, and the assistance in disaster recovery planning.

Dominic Foster, Chief Technology Officer, MaximumASP www.maximumasp.com

Video: Windows Server 2008 Session with Hyper-V demos

Bink — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 09:35:00 GMT

Matt (Virtual Boy): A few weeks back, I was invited along to a session with the Vista Squad, which is a UK based user group, focusing on Vista, .NET, Silverlight, and more. The session I was asked to deliver was on Windows Server 2008, and naturally, I obliged!

You can view the whole session below (it’s about an hour, and includes demos)

Apples, Oranges, and Hypervisor Price Comparisons

Bink — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 09:31:00 GMT

Fruit: Apples, Oranges

Fruitful: Current discussions on hypervisor price differences

Fruitless: Getting hypervisor vendors to agree on a fair pricing comparison

The Task

There’s been some interesting hypervisor pricing comparisons circulating the Internet over the past two weeks that have caught my interest:

VMware’s Mike Dipetrillo: ESX 3.5i for Free and the Impact on Hyper-V and the SMB
Virtualization.info - Alessandro Perilli: VMware ESXi vs Microsoft Hyper-V: which one is better for SMBs?
EvolveTechnologies - Dave Sobel: Is VMware Cheaper than Microsoft?

After reading with interest, I set out to conduct my own pricing evaluation, thinking that it couldn’t be too hard to get vendors to agree on a fair pricing comparison (insert joke here). To keep it simple, I decided to use a small branch office consisting of six Windows Server 2003 servers in the evaluation. I consider high availability a requirement in all production virtualization deployments and added virtual infrastructure management to the mix as well. To summarize, the solution requirements consisted of:

Virtualizing six Windows Server 2003 servers on two 2-way physical hosts
High availability failover support
Centralized management of the virtual infrastructure

With the criteria set, I moved to evaluating vendor solutions with each vendor’s bottom line list price.

The Proposed Solutions

Table 1 below compares what I see as comparable solutions from VMware, Microsoft, Virtual Iron, and Citrix.

Vendor	Hypervisor Package	High Availability	Management	Total Price
Citrix (Stratus OEM)	XenServer 4.1 (included in Stratus Avance)	Stratus Avance (includes XenServer hypervisor) $2,495 per node x 2 nodes = $4,990	Included with Stratus Avance software	$4,990
Microsoft	Hyper-V (included with Windows Server 2008 Enterprise license) $3,999 per node x 2 nodes = $7,998	Included with the Windows Server 2008 Enterprise Edition license	Essential management is provided by the Hyper-V Manager MMC (included with the OS). Advanced management included in System Center Virtual Machine Manger 2008. VMM 2007 Workgroup edition is priced at $499.	$7,998 or $8,497 (assumed price once VMM 2008 is available)
Virtual Iron	Virtual Iron Extended Enterprise Edition - $799 per socket x 4 sockets - $3,196	Included in Virtual Iron Extended Enterprise Edition	Included in Virtual Iron Extended Enterprise Edition	$3,196
VMware	VI Standard High Availability Acceleration Kit for 4 processors $7,254	Included in VMware Standard High Availability Acceleration Kit	Virtual Center Foundation Server license included in acceleration kit	$7,524

Table 1: Hypervisor price comparison (assumes Windows guest OS licensing is not required)

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Why does Hyper-V Manager not always work over VPN connection? Access Denied or RPC server unavailable errors.

Bink — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 09:28:00 GMT

This post examines a problem several people have reported when running Hyper-V Remote Management tools over a VPN connection - specifically hitting an error "Access denied. Unable to establish communication between ‘SERVER' and ‘CLIENT'". In some variations, I've seen RPC errors such as "RPC server unavailable. Unable to establish communication between ‘SERVER' and ‘CLIENT'."

And an example of an RPC error case:

To be explicit up front, I am talking about this only occurring over a VPN/RAS connection - when connected using a wired or wireless connection without VPN, everything works normally. If things are not working on wired/wireless, follow my series of remote management posts to configure everything first.

Diagnosing the issue took a bit of sleuthing. So let's dive in.

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System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 Privacy Statement

Bink — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 09:26:00 GMT

This is the Privacy Statement for the System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 product.

This Word document download provides the Privacy Statement for the System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 product.

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Hotfix improves how Windows Server 2008 Failover Cluster works with Hyper-V

Bink — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 22:20:00 GMT

If you work with Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V and Windows Server 2008 Failover Clustering, you should check a new update called "Increased functionality and virtual machine control in the Windows Server 2008 Failover Cluster Management console for the Hyper-V role". This hotfix includes a few key improvements on the way Windows Server 2008 Failover Cluster Management makes your Hyper-V virtual machines highly available, including:

Changes to the virtual machine view
Changes to virtual machine actions
Allow for more than one virtual machine in a "Services or Applications" group
Add support for mount points or volumes without a drive letter
Changes to the virtual machine refresh action
Behavior changes if any node of the failover cluster has a disconnected virtual machine
Behavior change when you add a pass-through disk to a virtual machine
Behavior change when the parent differencing disk is not on shared storage
Volume path copy

Check all the details and request the hotfix download at http://support.microsoft.com/?id=951308

A Rookie's Initial Experience with Hyper-V

Bink — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 16:54:00 GMT

Graham Jones (Surrey, British Columbia):

I should point out that I started down the Hyper-V road with very limited virtualization experience in general. Hitherto I had “played” with Virtual Server and Virtual PC to a very limited extent. So what was my purpose? It was quite simply that I felt that I ought to learn more about it so that I would at least be able to converse with those people who clearly know way more than I. Besides my daughter-in-law has just given me some spare PC’s from her business (my son and I just re-architected her systems to use SBS and TS on a new server) and a spare PC is something like an itch that has to be scratched. It turned out that one of the PC’s had a half decent ASUS mobo [M2A-VM which at ~$65 is great value] for the purpose (up to 8GB DDR2 RAM and 4 SATA sots). So with the purchase of 4GB RAM, the use of 3 spare drives and my MSDN subscription I was all set to go. The PC came with an AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ CPU which I anticipated would be perfectly adequate for “playing” purposes and so far has proven to be the case.

The other question regarding the processor is, “will it run Hyper-V”. In the case of AMD there is a feature called AMD-V which is supported in the Athlon 64 X2 series of processors (and others but not all). Intel has a similar feature (VT) and you will have to check to see which processors are supported. There is an AMD utility which checks to see if your system will support Hyper-V. When I first ran it I got a very disappointing “No”. However, a BIOS upgrade to the latest release soon solved the problem. There is also something called DEP (hardware data protection) which is a feature of 64bit processors but I won’t confuse matters by getting into that.

Having installed WS08 x64 Enterprise and turned on Hyper-V I was all excited with anticipation to create my first VM. I decided to choose WS03 x64 R2 Enterprise. Being the IT guy I pressed ahead on instinct. Why the heck would I need to read any instructions? I had heard that this was easier than falling of a log! Creating the actual VM is pretty straightforward and I remembered not to put it on the system drive (default location). I had planned to put the VM’s (more on which later) on the 2 non-system drives. Installing the OS was straightforward, ie. just like a regular machine, once I figured out how to re-boot the VM with the media in the DVD drive. The first time through I suddenly realized that I might be installing on the host machine and quit. Once installed one of the “pains” of VM’s came flooding back to me – capturing the keyboard and mouse to move between the guest OS window and the Virtual Machine Connection window. I will say that the whole interface is significantly better and more intuitive than with Virtual Server. Let’s face it, it had to be! OK, so now I had a working VM but it couldn’t “talk” to anything which is kind of useless. So my next excursion was into Virtual Networks. It turns out that there are 3 different types (External, Internal and Private) of which the External is of most interest to me at the moment, ie. connecting to the LAN/internet. So I proceeded to create an External VN with a binding to the single physical NIC on the machine (Realtek). Confident that I could now add the WS03 VM to the VN and all would be well I pressed on. But opening IE was a big non-event. I had no connectivity. Rick suggested that I needed to add the Integration Services via the Action menu (Insert Integration Services Setup Disk) on the Virtual Machine Connection. What the he… are the Integration Services (IS). You mean that this thing simply doesn’t work out of the box? Besides I don’t have a Setup Disk! Just for the hell of it I clicked on the menu item and big surprise – nothing happened.

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New ClearCube Suite Delivers Virtual Desktops to Dramatically Lower the Cost of Centralized PC Blade Computing

Bink — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 15:36:00 GMT

ClearCube Technology, the market leader in centralized desktop computing solutions, today announced the Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) Solutions Suite, a virtual desktop hardware and software solution that manages multiple desktops from a PC blade infrastructure. The VDI Solutions Suite dramatically reduces the cost of centralized computing without sacrificing the security and management benefits of PC blades. The new solution compliments ClearCube's popular 1 to 1 (1:1) PC blade offerings by providing multiple virtual desktops using a single high-performance managed platform.

Numerous organizations in healthcare, financial services and government have deployed ClearCube's PC blade offerings to benefit from the 99.9 percent uptime, reduced management costs, and enhanced security provided by a centralized infrastructure. Many of these enterprise customers are investigating virtual desktops for certain enterprise scenarios, such as for branch banks or remote healthcare specialty facilities, where geographically dispersed users can create significant support costs.

Other organizations are simply looking for more cost effective solutions for a large number of administrative and support staff. With per seat pricing starting at less than $1,000 and technology based on a long track record in centralized computing, ClearCube's VDI Solutions Suite is an attractive option.

"Our existing customers are all interested in virtual desktops, since they all have task and knowledge workers that do not need the full power of a desktop PC and can be very productive using a virtual machine," said Randy Printz, president and CEO of ClearCube. "At the same time, our new offering dramatically increases our market potential by making available ClearCube's expertise to any company that previously could not justify the expense of centralized computing. With the VDI Solutions Suite, the benefits of centralized computing -- easier management, enhanced security and maximum uptime -- can be extended to any organization or industry, and to all types of users."

The VDI Solutions Suite delivers a collection of new products, both hardware and software. From the datacenter to the desktop, these products are intended for use in a virtualized environment, and have been carefully designed to work together for optimum performance and manageability in a very compact and efficient form factor, and include fully integrated support for a variety of current virtualization technologies. ClearCube has thoroughly tested and analyzed many popular virtualization technologies, and the VDI Solutions Suite represents a comprehensive solution that greatly reduces the complexity of desktop virtualization.

In the datacenter, the VDI Solutions Suite includes a new V7000 chassis housing up to 10 of the company's new V7100S PC blades. The V7100S is a dual processor platform that combines high performance memory, network, and storage systems with an equally impressive eight cores of processing ability. The V7100S also leverages industry standard server class chipsets for total compatibility with VMware Server(TM) and a variety of other virtualization technologies.

At the desktop, the VDI Solutions Suite includes two new members of ClearCube's popular I/Port family of thin clients, the I8440 and the I8442. These devices represent the latest improvements in performance and manageability in desktop portals. The streamlined I8440 provides the most cost effective solution, while the I8442 delivers additional capabilities including dual monitor support. Both client models include support for new performance extensions expected later this year, which will further increase both multimedia and peripheral capabilities.

The management features of both the datacenter PC blades and the desktop thin clients are accessed through the latest release of Sentral(TM) 6.0, ClearCube's award winning management software. Sentral provides IT administrators easy access to and total control over their entire deployment of centralized computing resources -- from PC blades to virtual desktops, locally or remotely, and provides server-level availability (99.9 percent uptime) for end user computing.

With the VDI Solutions Suite, IT administrators can easily deploy and manage both virtual servers and virtual desktops. Whether the system is leveraged with VMware ESX(TM), VMware Server(TM), Microsoft(R) Hyper-V(TM), Citrix XenServer(TM) or other virtualization solutions, the ClearCube V7100S enables multiple users to simultaneously access a single blade, with each receiving their complete desktop experience through an isolated Virtual Machine (VM) environment and with their own operating system and applications.

"Organizations seeking to tame desktop chaos while offering their staff members powerful desktop solutions are often looking into virtual access of virtualized resources," said Dan Kusnetzky, principal analyst, Kusnetzky Group LLC. "ClearCube has a track record of success providing these organizations with hardware and software products that make it possible for organizations to create powerful, secure and manageable virtual desktop environments."

About ClearCube

ClearCube is the market leader of centralized computing and virtual desktop solutions. As the pioneer of centralized desktop computing, ClearCube provides solutions that span 1:1 power users to 1:many virtualized desktop environments, integrating connection broker software, blades, access devices and professional services to give organizations full control and flexibility over end-user computing. ClearCube's Sentral(TM) VDI Management System provides clients the ability to utilize any back-end hardware or user access device for desktop virtualization. Organizations deploying ClearCube gain improved manageability, 99.9 percent availability and hardened security while reducing support costs by more than 40 percent. For more information, visit its corporate website at www.clearcube.com.