HyperVoria

Hyper-V Management Tools update for Windows Vista Service Pack 2

Kenneth van Surksum — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 14:58:00 GMT

If you have installed Windows Vista Service Pack 2 on the system that you are using to manage Hyper-V – you should grab this update:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/970203

Note that this is an “update” which means that you need to have the original version of the Hyper-V Management Tools installed first (you can get them from here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/952627/).

For those of you who are curious as to why you have to do this as a separate download than the whole Windows Vista Service Pack 2 process – the reason is that as Hyper-V RTM’d after Windows Server 2008, we had to release the Vista management tools as an optional separate component on Windows Vista. The result is that we also have to service it separately – as we cannot assume that all users have it installed prior to installing Windows Vista Service Pack 2.

Hyper-V: How to remove disabled virtual network adapters from the parent partition

Kenneth van Surksum — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 23:37:00 GMT

John Howard:In May, I mentioned that we introduced a checkbox in the Hyper-V UI for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 which determines whether a virtual NIC is created in the parent partition for External Virtual Networks. (To get a better understanding of Hyper-V networking and what this means, take a look at this article.)

Microsoft Server Virtualization Validation Program Wizard

Kenneth van Surksum — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 17:38:00 GMT

Microsoft has published an online form on it's Windows Marketplace website which can help you determine if your Virtualization configuration is supported.

Visit the: Server Virtualization Validation Program

VIDEO: Configuring Microsoft Hyper-V Virtual Networking

Kenneth van Surksum — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 17:18:00 GMT

This video explains the process of configuring Microsoft Hyper-V Virtual Networking

Changes to virtual machine snapshots in Windows Server 2008 R2

Kenneth van Surksum — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 19:08:00 GMT

Ben Armstrong: In Windows Server 2008 R2 we have made some surgical changes to the way virtual machine snapshots work and how they are exposed in the system in order to address some key customer pain points. Changes include:

    * You can now export a single snapshot from a virtual machine. This works by selecting the snapshot in question and then selecting Export… from the Action pane. We will merge all the snapshot disk data into a single new virtual hard disk – and the resulting exported virtual machine will look like a virtual machine with no snapshots that is identical to the snapshot you selected. Note that the virtual machine needs to be turned off in order to perform this operation.
    * Snapshot AVHD files are now created in the same directory as their parent VHD files. Their names have also been updated to include the name of the parent virtual hard disk. Both of these changes make it easier to identify and group snapshot files.
    * When you open the settings for a virtual machine snapshot and look at the hard disk settings – you will see the name of the AVHD that is associated with that snapshot. This helps you to map AVHD files to specific snapshots.
    * You can now edit AVHD files in the edit VHD wizard. This means that if you want to manually merge AVHD files to a new VHD to give to someone else – you can (note: be careful as you can cause problems if you merge back into the parent in this case).
    * You can now directly attach an AVHD file to a virtual machine. This is very handy if you have lost your virtual machine configuration and need to get data off of a snapshot file.

Virtualizing Windows Essential Business Server

Kenneth van Surksum — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 19:55:00 GMT

Server virtualization enables multiple operating systems to run on a single physical server as virtual machines. With server virtualization, you can consolidate the workloads of multiple servers onto a smaller number of fully utilized servers. Fewer servers can reduce hardware, energy, and management costs. By using the Microsoft® Hyper-V™ technology in the Windows Server® 2008 operating system, you can run a virtualized instance of Windows® Essential Business Server on a single server or several servers.

System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 - Quick Storage Migration

Kenneth van Surksum — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 19:36:00 GMT

Edwin Yuen: As you may have seen, we recently released the Release Candidate for System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2. One of the most anticipated features of SCVMM 2008 R2 is Quick Storage Migration (QSM) which enables the migration of the storage of VM from one location to another. For example, suppose you have virtual machines on a leased SAN (SAN 1). The lease runs out and you decide to upgrade to a new SAN (SAN 2) with more capacity, better performance and additional capabilities. Quick Storage Migration allows you to move the virtual machine which resides on SAN 1 to SAN 2. I have had a number of request for more details on how this works so we've written this brief guide to QSM. (In addition, we wanted to make this technology broadly available, not just the biggest enterprises.

Hyper-V VLANs part II

Kenneth van Surksum — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 18:36:00 GMT

Adam Fazio: In my first post on Hyper-V VLANs, I talked about the most common scenario for VLANs with Hyper-V, which is using VLAD IDs on the Virtual Machines or the Hyper-V Virtual Switch. Now that I’ve been around the block a few times working with enterprise customers on some more sophisticated scenarios, I think it’s time to touch on other uses for VLANs on Hyper-V Hosts.

Nissan Shifts Manufacturing Costs With Hyper-V

Kenneth van Surksum — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 18:15:00 GMT

Over the course of a year, the engineers at Nissan's vehicle manufacturing plants in Smyrna and Decherd, Tenn., have implemented virtualization to consolidate 159 servers used in assembly and component manufacturing down to 28.

The consolidation is impressive, not only for its scale, but for the fact that it's been carried out by manufacturing and quality-assurance specialists outside the regular Nissan IT department. None of the servers involved was considered part of the business information services function, said Phil D'Antonio, department manager over conveyors and controls engineering in Nissan's Smyrna plant.

Storage migration with Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 (1/2)

Kenneth van Surksum — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 20:05:00 GMT

In the months ahead many virtual machines will have to be migrated to Windows Server 2008 R2 clusters. If a VM is now on a traditional shared cluster disk, the migration process can be executed by Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2. This process is called storage migration.

Windows Server Hyper-V Management Pack for System Center Operations Manager 2007

Kenneth van Surksum — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 12:21:00 GMT

This management pack supports monitoring of Windows Server Hyper-V systems. This includes monitoring coverage of Hyper-V host servers, including critical services and disks, and Hyper-V virtual machines, including virtual components and virtual hardware.

Feature Summary
This management pack provides the following functionality:

    * Management of critical Hyper-V services that affect virtual machines and host server functionality
    * Management of host server logical disks that affect virtual machine health
    * Full representation of virtualization in a single Hyper-V host server, including virtual networks, virtual machines, and guest computers
    * Monitoring of virtual machine hardware components that affect availability

What’s The Big Deal With Hyper-V and System Center?

Kenneth van Surksum — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 11:51:00 GMT

Aidan Finn: Microsoft’s big differentiator from the competition is management. Most people have never experienced System Center so they’ve no idea by what I mean by management. They’ve seen things like HP SIM, IBM Director or VMware Virtual Center. For me, those are incomplete point solutions but they’re better than some of the freeware or “cheapware” solutions I’ve seen on some sites. When I say management I mean knowing what is where, how it’s performing, automation of deployment & configuration, backup/recovery from cradle to grave and from hardware to application inclusive of virtualisation. Sounds like science fiction? Nope, it’s a reality for some of us who’ve gone down the System Center route. Even back in the early days, I had this sort of thing running in 2005. Me and my team of 2 others managed 173 worldwide servers and were 3rd line support for the desktops. That included doing all the AD management, PC image builds, patching and software deployment. That sounds like we must’ve worked 24 hours a day? Nope, outside of project/development work, we did around 3 hours a day between us.

Re: Windows Server 2008 SP2 Hyper-V

Kenneth van Surksum — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 11:42:00 GMT

Isaac Roybal, technical product manager on the Windows Server team covering Hyper-V: It’s been 3 weeks since the release of Windows Server 2008 Service Pack 2 (SP2) and we’re seeing great adoption. From a Hyper-V point of view, we’re excited because the final Hyper-V release is an integrated feature in SP2 making it easier and faster to deploy Hyper-V. If you recall, when Windows Server 2008 was released, Hyper-V Beta was included. This meant to get the final Hyper-V release, you needed to go to Windows Update, download and go through the update process.

With Windows Server 2008 SP2, Hyper-V final bits are included so there’s no need to pull down individual downloads which speeds up deployments. There are also some notable updates in SP2, including scalability enhancements for running on systems with up to 24 logical processors which enables support for up to 192 running virtual machines, update for Hyper-V when managed with System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 and updates for backup/restore of virtual machines with the Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS).

Creating virtual machines with Windows Virtual PC

Kenneth van Surksum — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 13:12:00 GMT

If you have read about Windows Virtual PC and Windows XP mode, you may mistakenly think that Windows Virtual PC can only be used for running applications in Windows XP mode. While this is one of the major features, Windows Virtual PC allows you to create multiple virtual machines and use them for multiple operating systems.

Problem with Hyper-V Beta Components on Windows Server 2008 SP2

Kenneth van Surksum — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 19:08:00 GMT

Ben Armstrong:We recently published KB2000048 which outlines that if you try to run a Windows Server 2008 virtual machine, with beta integration components, on a Windows Server 2008 SP2 system – the virtual machine will fail to boot.

Ordinarily this would not be a big issue, but the real concern is that any virtual machine created with Windows Server 2008 RTM install media will automatically have the problematic beta integration components.

The best way to avoid this problem is to ensure that you install the RTM version of the Hyper-V integration components in all virtual machines prior to installing SP2 on the physical computer, and after installing SP2 you should use installation media with SP2 integrated into it to create new virtual machines.

If you cannot do this the article above provides you with a list of possible workarounds.

VMware apologies for Microsoft YouTube video

Kenneth van Surksum — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 19:06:00 GMT

A VMware employee has fallen on his sword and apologised, after VMware’s marketing department attempted to be sneaky and anonymously posted a clip of Microsoft’s Hyper-V crashing onto YouTube.

Processor Compatibility in Hyper-V R2

Kenneth van Surksum — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 07:06:00 GMT

With the release candidate version of Windows Server 2008 R2 and Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 we have added a new feature called “Processor Compatibility”. The purpose behind this feature is to allow you to live migrate virtual machines between different processor types (from the same manufacturer) without any downtime.

This functionality is configurable through a simple check box on the processor settings page for the virtual machine. If you select to enable your virtual machine to Migrate to a physical computer with a different processor version then we make sure that the virtual machine can be migrated.

We do this by hiding advanced processor features from the virtual machine, so it can run on any version of the processor.

Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V and AMD's 6-core Opteron

Kenneth van Surksum — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 18:41:00 GMT

Bryon Surace: The recent announcement by AMD regarding the 6-core AMD Opteron processor (codenamed ‘Istanbul’) marks another milestone in AMD’s continued mission to create processors designed to provide performance, efficiency, and value.

The newly announced 6-core AMD Opteron processor will provide a total of 24 logical processors (cores) on a 4-socket system and 48 logical processors (cores) on an 8-socket system. In a non-virtualized IT environment, there aren’t many apps/services that are designed to utilize these large system resources. However, with Hyper-V in Windows Server 2008 R2, it’s a natural fit. WS08 R2 Hyper-V provides support for these new processors allowing large resources to be used to consolidate potentially hundreds of virtual machines on a single host.

Microsoft launches Visual Studio Lab Management 2010 beta

Kenneth van Surksum — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 14:31:00 GMT

The few vendors busy in the virtual lab automation space (which include VMware, Surgient, VMLogix, Skytap and the almost died StackSafe) may soon have a big, big problem called Microsoft.

After wasting years not leveraging its huge developers community to spread virtualization in every corner of the world, the company is finally moving on.

Announced in November 2008, the integration between Visual Studio 2010, System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) 2008 and Hyper-V 1.0/2.0 for virtual lab automation scenarios is now a reality called Visual Studio 2010 Lab Management.

Update on the VMware FUD Fiasco.

Kenneth van Surksum — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 14:25:00 GMT

Jeff Woolsey: Virtualization Nation,

If you've been following the VMware FUD fiasco, I just wanted to provide a quick update.

In the last post, we finally reached a point where VMware provided some basic information about their configuration and we immediately began working to reproduce the test. As I mentioned in the last blog, the Hyper-V team is fanatical about the stability of Hyper-V. If there's an issue, we're not going to hide. We will address the issue and provide a fix. Period. We are 100% customer focused and committed to world class support. We've still got some more work to do, but I told you that I'd provide an update in early June so I want to do just that.

Microsoft Hyper-V vs. Market Leaders

Kenneth van Surksum — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 14:20:00 GMT

Given the youth and feature set of Microsoft Hyper-V, the question is, how does it rate when compared to more seasoned hypervisors from VMware and Citrix?

In this videocast, senior enterprise IT architect Nelson Ruest breaks down VMware ESX Server, Citrix XenServer and Hyper-V, providing details on what each product has to offer. You'll also learn more about what you can and can't do with Hyper-V, with insight into some of the key memory management features that Microsoft's technology does not yet support.

Other topics covered include:

    * A look at typical Hyper-V configurations
    * Virtualization management tools - comparing VMware, Microsoft and Citrix
    * A breakdown of the best lab management tools on the market today

Disaster Recovery for Hyper-V (Part 1)

Kenneth van Surksum — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 19:50:00 GMT

Brien M. Posey: Although backing up and recovering a server is often simple and straightforward, virtualization can bring an extra layer of complexity into the picture. In this article series, I will discuss your options for disaster recovery within a Hyper-V environment.

Although there are many benefits to server virtualization, there is no denying that virtualization also adds an extra layer of complexity to server management. Perhaps nowhere is this more true than when it comes to backup and restore initiatives. What is even more frustrating is that there is a lot of misinformation on the Internet regarding backups and disaster recovery for virtual servers. In this article series, I am going to try to set the record straight by explaining the various disaster recovery options that are available to you in a Hyper-V environment.

Running Hyper-V in a lab? Use Snapshots? Check this out!

Kenneth van Surksum — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 19:35:00 GMT

The Hyper-V Snapshot feature(Checkpoint in SCVMM) is a very useful feature for Support Engineers. This allows us to revert the VM to a previous state irrespective of the local* changes you’ve made after the snapshot was taken. Working with customers on a daily basis necessitates having a system on which you can mirror the customer’s setup.

Windows Server 2008 R2 RTM and general Availability

Kenneth van Surksum — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 19:32:00 GMT

You may have seen some of the recent news articles that have started to roll out around the RTM and General availability dates of Windows 7. As Windows Server 2008 R2 is a joint development effort with Windows 7 we are aligned with the same RTM and General Availability (GA) dates.

With that – Windows Server 2008 R2 RTM code is on track to be available to our partners sometime in the 2nd half of July. Windows Server 2008 R2 will also be broadly available about the same time as the Windows 7 GA date of Oct 22.

How to Use Hyper-V Snapshot Revert, Apply, and Delete Options

Kenneth van Surksum — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 19:11:00 GMT

The Hyper-V snapshot feature allows you to capture the configuration and state of a virtual machine (VM) at any point in time, and return a VM to that state without noticeable interruption. When you take a snapshot of a running VM, Hyper-V briefly pauses the VM to create a new automatic virtual hard disk (AVHD) which is essentially a differencing disk, attaches it to the VM to store changes to the VM data, saves the processor state into a file (.bin), then resumes the VM. Hyper-V also makes a copy of the VM configuration file (.xml), and saves the contents of the VM memory into a file (.vsv). Snapshots can also be created when a VM is turned-off, in which case Hyper-V does not need to capture VM memory or processor state data.