Dario IT Solutions Blog

I’ve summarized several notes about Hyper-V and VMM. It may be useful for you to take it into account when planning or handling Hyper-V platforms.

1. Enabling NLB on a VM
Follow this procedure in case you need to enable NLB on a VM running under Hyper-V 2008. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/953828
Note that when your VM is running under Hyper-V 2008 R2, you will no longer need to specify a certain MAC. You will only need to check the option to “Enable MAC spoofing”.
Follow this link for detailed steps: http://robwhitehouse.com/virtualisation/enable-nlb-in-a-hyper-v-guest/

2. Max CPUs per VM
This Technet article shows the max number of allowed CPUs per VMs : http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc794868(WS.10).aspx

3. Disk alignment
Set the disk alignment on two levels:

1. On the storage level. Set the alignment of the LUN so that the disk that the Host OS sees will see blocks the same as you storage device.
   Follow this link for best practices for Hyper-V on NetAPP : http://www.netapp.com/us/communities/tech-ontap/tot-hyperv-best-practices-0911.html
   Follow this direct link for the complete document, where you will find additional information regarding disk alignment : http://media.netapp.com/documents/tr-3702.pdf
2. Within the VHD. After aligning the partition on the LUN on the Host server, you should also align the partition that exists within the VHD file. The above link to the NetAPP documentation shows this procedure as well. You should notice, though, these point:

i. 2008 R2 allows you to mount a VHD to the host (without booting it to a VM). This allows you to create / change / align partitions from the host itself, before creating the VM.

ii. Aligning the VHD is only relevant for fixed virtual disks. Alignment of Incremental or dynamic disks won’t last, due to the nature of the file.

4. IDE / SCSI
Your boot disk has to be connected to an IDE controller on the VM (SCSI controller is a synthetic device http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/2008.10.hyperv.aspx?pr=blog ). Connect all Other drives to a SCSI controller for better performance.controller.

5. Pass Through Disks
For best application disk performance, use Pass-Through disks. Pass-Through disks will give the VM direct access to a physical drive. For more information on this feature: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc768521(BTS.10).aspx

6. Moving VMs from 2008 to 2008 R2
After moving VMs from a Server 2008 to Server 2008 R2 be sure to install the integration services again.

7. General Host / VM Performance
Follow this link for explanation about measuring basic Memory / CPU / Disk performance: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/2008.08.pulse.aspx?pr=blog . Pay special attention to the disk monitoring. It is very likely that you’ve placed several disk intensive VMs on the same LUN.

8. Disconnect ISO files
When working on a Hyper-V cluster, make sure that you disconnect any ISO file from a VM when you’re done using it. Otherwise, when moving or live migrating your VM, it may fail because it wouldn’t find the ISO to connect to on the other node.

9. What’s new in VMM 2008 R2
http://www.microsoft.com/systemcenter/virtualmachinemanager/en/us/whats-new-r2.aspx

10. Disk size planning
When planning the size of the disk holding the VM’s VHDs, make sure that you have enough free space to save also the VM’s snapshots and entire memory. When Saving / Moving or Live Migrating the VM, the VM’s entire memory content is saved to disk.

The process of mailbox-enabling a user for Exchange 2003-based mailbox was preformed using the Active Directory Users and Computers SnapIn. Using this SnapIn, you could choose to place the mailbox on a DB located on an Exchange 2007 server. That, of course, would be the wrong way to go. The appropriate way of creating a mailbox on Exchange 2007 is to use the Exchange Management Console or the Exchange Management Shell.

Creating an Exchange 2007 mailbox using the mentioned snapIn would leave you with a mailbox that is missing some attributes. These attributes are required for normal operation under Exchange 2007 environment. Your mailbox will appear as “Legacy Mailbox”, rather then “User Mailbox” in the EMC. Usually, “Legacy Mailbox” means that this is a mailbox located on an Exchange 2003 within the same Exchange Organization.

The fix is simple.

Open Exchange Management Shell and run this command on the problematic mailbox:

Set-Mailbox Alias -ApplyMandatoryProperties

Your mailbox’s attributes should have been updated,  and the result will be visible a few seconds later within the EMC.

Further details from Microsoft:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/931747

You may have experienced an issue with a Remote Desktop connection to a Server 2008 in which you see black/white grid lines on all or on part of the screen.

This may look something like this:

It appears that this issue is linked to this update : http://support.microsoft.com/kb/958470/en-us

Changing the setting of the RD connection (bitrate, colors etc) doesn’t seem to help.

This issue will be resolved when upgrading the client’s RDP version to 6.0 or newer.

When trying to Live Migrate a virtual machine, the process might fail and inform you that your virtual machine is not compatible with the target node.

If you try to Move (instead of Live Migrate) the virtual machine to another node, the process will again fail and you the following event will be logged:

Log Name:      System
Source:        Microsoft-Windows-FailoverClustering
Event ID:      1205

The Cluster service failed to bring clustered service or application ‘xxxxx’ completely online or offline. One or more resources may be in a failed state. This may impact the availability of the clustered service or application.

This situation is indeed caused, as the error indicated, by different processor capabilities. Check the exact processor version of your Nodes. You can use msinfo32 to get a detailed view. Here’s, for example, the types of CPUs I see:

Node1

Node2

What happens is that when the virtual machine starts, the hypervisor exposes certain CPU capabilities to the virtual machine. When Live Migrating or Moving the VM to a different host, the VM isn’t aware of the hardware change, tries to use capabilities that it’s new CPU doesn’t support, and fails to start.

Luckily, the solution is simple. Open the VM’s settings, and under the CPU settings check the option named “Migrate to a physical computer with a different processor version".

Note that the VM has to be off in order for you to check this option.

When checking this option, the hypervisor is only exposing the VM to the features of the processor that are available on all versions of a virtualization-capable processor by the same processor manufacturer. Note that this option doesn’t allow you to migrate between AMD and Intel CPUs. Check this Microsoft Technet article for further details: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd446679(WS.10).aspx

It is important to read between the lines in this case. Although you will be able to migrate without errors, your VM does LOSE PERFORMANCE .

This means that when planning to build a new Hyper-V Cluster, make sure that you get exactly the same CPUs on your physical hosts. Otherwise, you will have to downgrade the CPU capabilities of your VMs.

Hope this is helpful.

Kobi

Check out this new and very handy tool from Sysinternals:

Disk2vhd v1.0

By Mark Russinovich and Bryce Cogswell

Published: October 7, 2009

Download Disk2vhd (704 KB)

Introduction

Disk2vhd is a utility that creates VHD (Virtual Hard Disk – Microsoft’s Virtual Machine disk format) versions of physical disks for use in Microsoft Virtual PC or Microsoft Hyper-V virtual machines (VMs). The difference between Disk2vhd and other physical-to-virtual tools is that you can run Disk2vhd on a system that’s online. Disk2vhd uses Windows’ Volume Snapshot capability, introduced in Windows XP, to create consistent point-in-time snapshots of the volumes you want to include in a conversion. You can even have Disk2vhd create the VHDs on local volumes, even ones being converted (though performance is better when the VHD is on a disk different than ones being converted).

The Disk2vhd user interface lists the volumes present on the system:

It will create one VHD for each disk on which selected volumes reside. It preserves the partitioning information of the disk, but only copies the data contents for volumes on the disk that are selected. This enables you to capture just system volumes and exclude data volumes, for example.

Note: Virtual PC supports a maximum virtual disk size of 127GB. If you create a VHD from a larger disk it will not be accessible from a Virtual PC VM.

To use VHDs produced by Disk2vhd, create a VM with the desired characteristics and add the VHDs to the VM’s configuration as IDE disks. On first boot, a VM booting a captured copy of Windows will detect the VM’s hardware and automatically install drivers, if present in the image. If the required drivers are not present, install them via the Virtual PC or Hyper-V integration components. You can also attach to VHDs using the Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2 Disk Management or Diskpart utilities.

Note: do not attach to VHDs on the same system on which you created them if you plan on booting from them. If you do so, Windows will assign the VHD a new disk signature to avoid a collision with the signature of the VHD’s source disk. Windows references disks in the boot configuration database (BCD) by disk signature, so when that happens Windows booted in a VM will fail to locate the boot disk.

Disk2vhd runs Windows XP SP2, Windows Server 2003 SP1, and higher, including x64 systems.

Here’s a screenshot of a copy of a Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V system running in a virtual machine on top of the system it was made from:

(click image to zoom)

Download Disk2vhd
(704 KB)

I know its a bit late, but here is the presentation I gave on November 3rd at the Microsoft convention – Let’s Talk Business-Tech that was held at Tel Aviv.

During the presentation, my co-presenter Ronen Gabay and myself talked about the new features of Failover Clustering in Windows 2008 R2.

We talked about Geo-Clusters, PowerShell 2.0 extensive support, Cluster Shared Volumes and mainly about how simple it is to create and manage complex cluster (everyone can do it! believe me! ).

We finished the presentation with a nice demo of RDS 7.0 media enhancement when we showed a 1080P HD movie (Terminators 2 Trailer) over RDP 7.0 while doing a Live Migration of the RDS Session Host virtual server that we RDPed into.. very nice!

What do you think, will we start seeing more clusters from now on? or something is still missing?

I’ll love to get your input.

Hi all,

Microsoft recently announced that customers can now deploy Microsoft Windows Server and Red Hat Enterprise Linux and a range of select applications, virtualized on Red Hat and Microsoft virtualization products, knowing that the combined solutions will be supported by both companies.

Here are the details:

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.2, 5.3, 5.4 have passed cert tests when running on Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V, Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V, Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2. See more at RedHat’s certified hardware site.
• Windows Server 2003/ Windows Server 2008 / Windows Server 2008 R2 are validated to run on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.4, using their KVM-based hypervisor. See more at Microsoft Server Virtualization Validation Program site.

Beyond the OS, both companies have select applications that would receive technical support when running on certified server virtualization software.

The Microsoft applications can be seen in KB article 957006. On the Red Hat side, you can now run JBoss Enterprise Middleware within a virtual machine guest on Hyper-V and receive coordinated technical support.

This is a step forward for enterprise customers, hosting providers, systems integrators, and those who want to offer their customers the top x86 operating systems to run applications.

Good news for everyone that uses both Microsoft & Red Hat products, I hope more collaboration news like that will continue to come out.

Hi guys,

I’ll be delivering a session at Intel’s “Life after death using… Intel® vPro™ Technology!” conference held on September 14th 2009 at Air Port City, Israel.

This session will focus on integrating SCCM In-Band management capabilities with vPro Out of Band capabilities.

Out of band management allows an administrator to connect to a computer’s management controller when the computer is turned off, in sleep or hibernate modes, or otherwise unresponsive through the operating system. By way of contrast, in-band management is the classic approach used by Configuration Manager and its predecessors whereby an agent runs in the full operating system on the managed computer and the management controller accomplishes tasks by communicating with the management agent.

Out of band management supplements in-band management. While in-band management supports a wider range of operations because it’s environment is the full operating system, in-band management might not be functional if the operating system is not present or is not operational. In these situations, the supplementary capabilities of out of band management allow administrators to manage these computers without requiring local access to the computer.

Out of band management tasks include the following:

• Powering on one or many computers (for example, for maintenance on computers outside business hours).
• Powering off one or many computers (for example, the operating system stops responding).
• Restarting a nonfunctioning computer or booting from a locally connected device or known good boot image file.
• Re-imaging a computer by booting from a boot image file that is located on the network or by using a PXE server.
• Reconfiguring the BIOS settings on a selected computer (and bypassing the BIOS password if this is supported by the BIOS manufacturer).
• Booting to a command-based operating system to run commands, repair utilities, or diagnostic applications (for example, upgrading the firmware or running a disk repair utility).
• Configuring scheduled software update deployments and advertisements to wake up computers prior to running.

SP2 for SCCM 2007 R2 added some important new features, like:

New Operating System Support
• Windows 7
• Windows Server 2008 R2
• Windows Server 2008 SP2
• Windows Vista Sp2

New Features in Out of Band Management
Configuration Manager 2007 Service Pack 2 improves on the Intel AMT integration provided in Service Pack 1. SP2 adds full feature support for computers that have the Intel vPro chip set and AMT firmware versions 4 & 5. In addition to providing feature parity with SP1 and AMT firmware versions 3.2.1, 4.0 and 5.0, the following new features are supported:

Wireless Management (mobile only)
• Up to eight (8) wireless profiles per out of band service point
• Profiles support SSID, WAP2-Enterprise or WAP-Enterprise security, AES or TKIP encryption, client authentication options of EAP-TLS or EAP-TTLS/MSCHAPv2 or PEAPv0/EAP-MSCHAPv2
• Versions of AMT earlier than 3.2.1 are supported with the Intel translator

Authenticated Wired 802.1x Management
• Single profile
• Profile supports client authentication options of EAP-TLS or EAP-TTLS/MSCHAPv2 or PEAPv0/EAP-MSCHAPv2
• Versions of AMT earlier than 3.2.1 are supported with the Intel translator

Audit Logging
• Supported on AMT versions 4 and 5
• Select which out of band management features to audit (critical events not supported)
• Enable or disable audit logging per computer after provisioning
• View, clear, and export to file the audit log entries by using the out of band management console

Power State Configuration
• Enable configuration of the power settings to specify whether out of band management activity is supported when the host is on (S0), host is on (S0) or in standby (S3), or always on (S0-S5)

Data Storage
• Save up to 4096 bytes in ASCII characters in the AMT data storage of each computer
• View and save to the data store by using the out of band management console

Lastly, check out this cool integration demo from Intel – a ConfigMgr advertisement is used to remotely and securely wake-up (boot) Intel vPro systems and push an automated BIOS upgrade.

References for additional reading:

vPro ROI Analysis / Benefits of Activating
http://communities.intel.com/docs/DOC-1494/

Case Stories
http://communities.intel.com/docs/DOC-2260

vPro / SCCM Check list, Quick start Guide, & Tips & Tricks
http://communities.intel.com/community/openportit/vproexpert/microsoft-vpro

ConfigMgr Administrators Checklist and Prerequisites

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc161943(TechNet.10).aspx

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc161785(TechNet.10).aspx

Self Pace SCCM SP1 / vPro Activation Training

http://communities.intel.com/community/openportit/vproexpert/microsoft-vpro/blog/2008/10/24/microsoft-sccm-2007-sp1-intel-vpro-training-videos-now-available

Infrastructure Prep Checklist for Microsoft SCCM

http://communities.intel.com/openport/docs/DOC-2300

Microsoft announced the release of the System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 Connectors!  This is an important milestone as it provides a foundation for interoperability with other products, both external and internal.  The Connectors are available for download at the following location:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=592e4143-c5c8-4270-9a7a-cd0a31ab3189

The Operations Manager 2007 R2 Connectors provide Operations Manager 2007 R2 alert forwarding to remote systems, such as an Enterprise Management System (EMS) or a help desk system. After Operations Manager 2007 R2 forwards an alert to a remote system, the alert data is synchronized throughout the lifetime of the alert.  The result of that data synchronization is a robust and seamless systems management environment. Such an environment enables cross-organization support processes to take advantage of the resources and strengths of formerly independent support groups. The ultimate effect is improved enterprise systems health through improved organizational communication.

Sharing data between Operations Manager 2007 R2 and remote systems enables enterprise correlation of events from Windows-based systems, hardware, network, and UNIX systems. Correlating these events allows IT staff to determine the causes of issues and reduce the time to resolution of IT outages.

Synchronization of data between Operations Manager 2007 R2 and remote systems also enables operational groups to use familiar management interfaces. Users update an alert by using their management tool, and the data is updated in tools that are used by other operational groups.

The following connectors are available in this initial RTM:

1. Operations Manager 2007 R2 Connector for IBM Tivoli Enterprise Management Console
2. Operations Manager 2007 R2 Connector for HP Operations Manager (formerly HP OpenView Operations)
3. Operations Manager 2007 R2 Connector for BMC Remedy Action Request System (ARS)
4. Operations Manager 2007 R2 Universal Connector

For more information regarding the Connectors, you can review the following resources:

Download Details:

- http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=592e4143-c5c8-4270-9a7a-cd0a31ab3189

TechNet Documentation:

- http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd795265.aspx

TechNet Forums:

- General:  http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/interopgeneral/threads

- Connector for IBM Tivoli Enterprise Console:  http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/interoptivoli/threads

- Connector for HP Operations Manager:  http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/interophpoperationsmanager/threads

- Connector for BMC Remedy ARS:  http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/interopremedy/threads/

- Universal Connector:  http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/interopuniversalconnector/threads

If you had to maintain a SCCM server in an offline environment you know it’s not a simple task. One of the steps you have to carry out is to download all the updates from the Internet or to copy them from another WSUS/SCCM SUP server that is connected to Internet and had already downloaded all the updates.

For the first method you can use this great post:

http://myitforum.com/cs2/blogs/jgilbert/archive/2008/10/28/getting-required-updates-on-non-internet-connected-sups-part-1.aspx

and part 2:

http://myitforum.com/cs2/blogs/jgilbert/archive/2008/10/28/getting-required-updates-on-non-internet-connected-sups-part-2.aspx

If you have another WSUS/SCCM SUP server that is online, the easiest way to get those updates is to copy them from the server. This is where it gets a little bit tricky:

The updates are found in the “WSUSContent” folder or in SCCM’s case in a folder share of your choice, the only problem is that they are scattered in different folders, This causes a problem because when you’ll need to provide the offline WSUS/SCCM SUP with the updates they will have to be in a single folder. For this purpose I found a little batch file that will get the job done (Credit goes to Rems):

@echo off
title WAIT !

Set "sourceDir=c:\1234"
Set "destinationFolder=c:\SHOEBOX"
Set "_report=c:\logxcopy.txt"

IF NOT EXIST "%sourceDir%" (echo.Could not find %sourceDir% &GoTo:done)

:: overwrite previous log
>"%_report%" (
      echo.%date% - %time%
      echo.---------------------------------------------------
      echo.
)

:: copy files
For /F "Delims=" %%! in ('Dir "%sourceDir%\" /b /s /a-d 2^>nul') do (
   @echo.%%! &(
   @xcopy "%%!" "%destinationFolder%\" /i /y /h /f /c >>"%_report%",2>&1)
)

:done
title,Done.......

echo.&pause>nul

This batch will copy all the files from a folder tree to a single folder.

More info about offline WSUS/SCCM SUP environment:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc720512(WS.10).aspx

http://myitforum.com/cs2/blogs/jgilbert/archive/2008/10/19/synchronizing-non-internet-connected-software-update-points.aspx

Enjoy!