MVUG Blog

Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V Management Pack for Operations Manager 2007 - TAP

The System Center Operations Manager team has released a beta build of the Hyper-V Management Pack. The key point here is that Microsoft can now, with the addition of the Hyper-V Management Pack for Operations Manager, monitor the health and performance of the Hyper-V host itself.

The Hyper-V Management Pack is supported on the following configurations:

• Hyper-V on the 64-bit edition of the Windows Server 2008 Standard operating system
• Hyper-V on the 64-bit edition of the Windows Server 2008 Enterprise operating system
• Hyper-V on the 64-bit edition of the Windows Server 2008 Datacenter operating system

Note:  This TAP release of the Hyper-V Management Pack is not supported on a Server Core installation of Windows Server 2008.

To obtain a Connect registration code email mpcc@microsoft.com in the subject: field use “Request: Hyper-V Management Pack Registration Code”

Patrick Lownds

Unsupported Cluster Configuration

Recently I was asked why when using a Geo. Cluster configuration with Hyper-V (in this instance two HP EVA Arrays with StorageWorks Cluster Extension (CLX)) the clusters show up as not supported in SCVMM 2008.

The issue is SCVMM 2008 doesn’t support CLX (actually HP isn’t the only vendor with this cosmetic issue, any Geo. Cluster solution is impacted, and I have seen this on EMC's SRDF as well).
CLX requires you to create a new resource inside the VMs Cluster Resource Group and set a dependency between the disk and the new CLX resource. However SCVMM detects the CLX resource inside the VMs cluster resource group, blocks support for this, and so the VMs state change to “unsupported cluster configuration”

The problem is also well documented externally at http://social.technet.microsoft.com/forums/en-US/virtualmachinemgrclustering/thread/1e0b803c-1da1-40a5-8e26-d3770f142a5a/

In my opinion it is unlikely that we will see a hot fix to resolve this issue anytime soon and that any hot fix planned would be rolled up into SCVMM 2008 R2.

Patrick Lownds

System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 Configuration Analyzer Update 1

Folks,
There has been an update to VMM 2008 CA at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=02d83950-c03d-454e-803b-96d1c1d5be24&displaylang=en. This updated version of VMM 2008 CA now includes checks for all recommended hot fixes for the VMM 2008 server and the Windows hosts. 

Patrick Lownds

System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 Beta

Microsoft Connect (http://connect.microsoft.com) has a pre-registration entry for SCVMM 2008 R2. If you’re interested in the beta go register.

What’s New in VMM 2008 R2 Beta
System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 (VMM) is a comprehensive management solution for managing virtualized infrastructure running on Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V, Virtual Server 2005 R2 and VMware ESX through Virtual Center.  Recently, Windows Server 2008 R2 Beta was released which included significant feature improvements to Hyper-V—the underlying hypervisor platform.  A corresponding beta version of VMM R2 – the next version of VMM – is due for release shortly.  VMM R2 Beta  leverages the new platform enhancements and extends the feature set of VMM 2008. This overview highlights the most important new and significantly enhanced features in the VMM 2008 R2 Beta:

Support for new features of Windows Server 2008 R2 Beta

• Live Migration: - Seen through the VMM console, this enables administrators to move virtual machines from one machine in a virtual host cluster to another with no downtime. This allows administrators greater flexibility in responding to planned or unplanned downtime, provides higher machine availability and more robust fault tolerance within virtualized infrastructure. The basic requirements for Live Migration are that all hosts must be part of a cluster and host processors must be from the same manufacturer.  Additionally all hosts in the cluster must have access to shared storage.  No changes are required to existing virtual machines, network, or storage devices in moving from Quick Migration to Live Migration other than upgrading to beta versions of Windows Server 2008 R2 and VMM 2008 R2.
• Hot addition/removal of VHDs:  Allows the addition and removal of new virtual hard disks (VHDs) on a running virtual machine.  This enables storage growth in virtual machines without downtime.  Additionally, ‘live” VHD management allows administrators to take advantage of additional backup scenarios and readily use mission critical and storage-intense applications (eg: SQL Server and Exchange).
• New optimized networking technologies: VMM 2008 R2 Beta supports two new networking technologies – Virtual Machine Queue (VMQ) and TCP Chimney – providing increased network performance while demanding less CPU burden.  NICS that support VMQ, create a unique virtual network queue for each virtual machine on a host that can pass network packets directly from the hypervisor to virtual machine. This speeds throughput as it bypasses much of the processing normally required by the virtualization stack. With TCP Chimney, TCP/IP traffic can be offloaded to a physical NIC on the host computer reducing CPU load and improving network performance.

Enhanced storage and cluster support
• Clustered Shared Volumes (CSV): Provides a single, consistent storage space that allows virtual hosts in a cluster to concurrently access virtual machine files on a single shared logical unit number (LUN). CSV eliminates the previous one LUN per virtual machine restriction and coordinates the use of storage with much greater efficiency and higher performance. CSV enables the Live Migration of virtual machines in and out of the shared LUN without impacting other virtual machines. Enabling CSV on failover clusters is straightforward and easy to monitor through the VMM administrator’s console; many storage configuration complexities prior to CSV have been eliminated.
• SAN migration into and out of clustered hosts: This allows virtual machines to migrate into and out of clustered hosts using a SAN transfer, which automatically configures the cluster nodes to recognize and support the new workload.
• Expanded Support for iSCSI SANs:  Previously, only one LUN could be bound to a single iSCSI target whereas now -- with VMM 2008 R2 Beta -- multiple LUNS can be mapped to a single iSCSI target.    This provides broader industry support for iSCSI SANs allowing customers more flexibility in choosing storage providers and iSCSI SAN options.

Streamlined process for managing host upgrades
• Maintenance Mode:  Allows administrators to apply updates or perform maintenance on a host server by safely evacuating all virtual machines to other hosts on a cluster using Live Migration or putting those workloads into a saved state to be safely reactivated when maintenance or upgrades are complete. Maintenance mode is enabled for all supported hypervisor platforms on Windows Server 2008 R2 Beta.

Other VMM 2008 R2 Beta enhancements
• Support of disjoint domains:  Reduces the complexity of reconciling host servers with differing domain names in Active Directory and DNS.  In these situations, VMM 2008 R2 Beta automatically creates a custom service principal name (SPN) configured in both AD and DNS allowing for successful authentication. 
• Use of defined port groups with VMware Virtual Center:  On installation, VMM 2008 R2 Beta will present available port groups for VMM’s use with VMware Virtual Center thus allowing administrators to maintain control over which port groups are used.

Patrick Lownds

Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V Insiders Guide to Microsoft's Hypervisor

Although not published yet, this book is written by 3 senior Microsoft Hyper-V PMs (John Kelbley, Mike Sterling and Allen Stewart). For more information take a look at http://eu.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0470440961.html

Patrick Lownds

Hyper-V Certificate Expiration and Resolution

If you are unable to open a Hyper-V mmc console and get the following message: "Cannot connect to the virtual machine because the authentication certificate is expired or invalid". Check out the following Microsoft KB http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=967902

This applies to the following:

Windows Server 2008, Standard (Hyper-V role enabled)
Windows Server 2008, Enterprise (Hyper-V role enabled)
Windows Server 2008, Datacenter (Hyper-V role enabled)
Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008

Patrick Lownds

Demonstrating the value of SCDPM 2007 SP1 in a POC environment to protect Hyper-V

In early February I attended a half day partner event “Intelligent Application Protection with Systems Center Data Protection Manager 2007” and this event stimulated me into thinking about what kind of things I would like to demonstrate, when running a SCDPM 2007 SP1 POC, to protect Hyper-V.

The result, with some validation from both Stephen Porter (Storage Partner Manager – Microsoft EMEA) and Anthony Tyler (Storage Technology Architect – Microsoft EMEA) is as follows:

Demonstrate the use of SCDPM 2007 SP1 to backup, recover and provide DR functionality

Allocate storage on the DPM Server
Configure SCDPM 2007 SP1 Hyper-V protection
Specify short term backup objectives e.g. define retention range and frequency for synchronization of data
Specify long term backup objectives (this would require a tape device or an emulator)
Create a protection group
Create a recovery point for Hyper-V
Recover a Hyper-V server
Demonstrate DR functionality by doing an alternative location restore

Patrick Lownds

In Hyper-V, is the Root Partition a Virtual Machine?

OK, so I couldn't help myself! For some time now I have been trying to autocorrect people when they say the Root Partition is a virtual machine.

If the Root Partition was a virtual machine then where is its associated Worker Process???

Well a colleague of mine got to ask a Virtualisation PM (Ben Armstrong) the question while at the MVP summit. Here is a snippet:

Today Ben Armstrong a programme manager of the Hyper-V product group took the time to answer the question for me. This question and its answer really has no practical application or significance but it does help clarify some Hyper-V terms.

So Hyper-V has the root partition, which the hypervisor allows direct access to the hardware devices such as the NICs, and then there are the child partitions where guest VMs run.

Both a virtual machine and the root partition have their CPU and memory resources allocated and managed by the hypervisor. But a VM access all IO devices (NICs, disk drives and so on) either via the VMbus or emulation though the hypervisor. To do IO a VM must use the virtualisation services provided by the root partition. The synthetic devices in the guest VMs or the Hypervisor (on behalf of the guest VM) use the VMbus to redirect a VMs IO requests to the root partition.

So because the root partition does not use its own virtualisation services to access hardware devices but is allowed by the hypervisor to access the IO hardware devices directly, by definition, the root partition is NOT a VM.

Check the blog out at http://cid-39d7e872cb035259.spaces.live.com/blog/

Patrick Lownds

SCVMM 2008 Self Service

Recently I was asked what the flow of communication looks like when using the self-service portal to connect to a VM. Is the console traffic proxied through the SCVMM server or does the web-client connect directly to the respective Hyper-V server hosting the VM?

The answer is it depends!

If remote connections are enabled on the Hyper-V host, and allowed for the user role, and the CredSSP Security Support Provider is enabled, a connection is made to the Hyper-V host using port 2179 (or the port you specified when the host was added as a managed host). Otherwise, if all three conditions are not met, the Self-Service Portal will attempt a direct RDP connection to the specific virtual machine using port 3389. To allow the Self-Service Portal remote connection to port 3389, remote connections must be enabled and Integration Services must be installed on the target virtual machine.

Patrick Lownds

Mark Wilson - Hyper-V Q&A

Mark has posted a Hyper-V Q&A blog at http://www.markwilson.co.uk/blog/2009/02/hyper-v-qa.htm which answers a number of questions if you are starting out with Hyper-V. 

Patrick Lownds

Guide to installing and configuring Hyper-V R2 + CSV + Live Migration

The clustering team have posted a step-by-step guide to setting up Hyper-V with Cluster Shared Volumes on Windows Server 2008 R2 so that you can perform live migrations of virtual machines at http://blogs.msdn.com/clustering/archive/2009/02/19/9433146.aspx

Patrick Lownds

Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V Resource Kit

The definitive resource for administering Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V—from those who know the technology best.

Get the definitive reference for managing and supporting Hyper-V (virtualization) in Windows Server 2008—with insights from the Microsoft experts who know the technology best. This official Microsoft RESOURCE KIT provides in-depth technical guidance and best practices on how to deploy, install, configure, administer, and support Hyper-V, along with drilldown into advanced configuration options; development and testing tools; migration, management, and scripting tools; security features; Linux support; disaster recovery; and how to extend and customize the technology. You also get a CD packed with sample scripts, technical white papers; videos from the authors; and a fully searchable eBook version of the entire guide.

http://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/Books/11842.aspx

Patrick Lownds