TechAgility

Given that Hyper-V has now just been released as RTM it’s likely that more people are looking at the product and quite possibly for the first time so this sort of information might be very useful? 

10 commonly asked questions or issues seen during Hyper-V beta

With the RTM release of Hyper-V just around the corner, I thought it would be a good idea to re-visit some of the top things we have seen customers encounter when installing and configuring Hyper-V for the first time and give pointers to resources we have available to eliminate those when you start rolling this out in production for the first time. I have taken the liberty of linking many of these questions/issues to blogs written by our program managers on the virtualization team. We did a previous post on their sites but I thought this would serve as a quick reference and a pointer to them at the same time.

1. You don’t have mouse functionality in your VM. One of the most commonly asked questions during the beta, internally and externally had to do with lack of mouse support in a guest when its running. One of the main reasons we saw this happening was that people were remoted into the parent and then controlling the guest from there, that wont work in Hyper-V. More information about best practices can be found here:

http://blogs.technet.com/jhoward/archive/2008/03/23/controlling-vms-under-hyper-v-without-the-mouse.aspx

2. Hyper-V wont install. Another common question had to do with Hyper-V not installing at all. People would add the role and either would get errors post installation, prior to installation, etc. So, to revisit the core requirements for the Hyper-V role to be installed and functional on your machine, see the release notes once we RTM. Top issues here though were folks not enabling Virtualization and DEP in their system BIOS, not shutting down the parent completely at the end of installation but rebooting the parent instead, and not adding the proper entries to the BCD store on a Core installation (hint: rebooting twice takes care of this in Core).

3. Import isn’t working within Hyper-V for your Virtual Server VMs. Another common question is what the Import Virtual Machine button does within the Hyper-V console. Many people, myself included early on, thought that it was there to import a .vhd from a Virtual Server installation. It’s not. It’s there to import an exported Hyper-V virtual machine. The proper way to import a previously used Virtual Server .vhd file is to create a new virtual machine and use the existing hard drive function during setup.

4. Hyper-V clustering: Clustering Hyper-V installations is new and different in Windows 2008. Rather than re-inventing the wheel here I strongly encourage you all to use the excellent whitepaper thats out on the external Microsoft site:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=CD828712-8D1E-45D1-A290-7EDADF1E4E9C&displaylang=en

5. Snapshotting in Hyper-V. Snapshotting confuses a lot of people because they liken them to un-do disks in Virtual Server. They aren’t the same thing. Excellent references below to how snapshotting works in Hyper-V and how to get the undo functionality that you’re used to are linked below.

http://blogs.technet.com/roblarson/archive/2008/05/15/getting-undo-functionality-with-hyper-v-snapshots.aspx

and

http://blogs.technet.com/roblarson/archive/2008/04/26/virtual-machine-snapshots-with-hyper-v.aspx

6. Virtual Networks. Additionally virtual networking has been totally revamped in Hyper-V and many dont understand the purpose of the individual networking options within the console. Linkage to a great article on them is below:

http://blogs.technet.com/jhoward/archive/2008/06/16/how-does-basic-networking-work-in-hyper-v.aspx

and

http://blogs.technet.com/jhoward/archive/2008/06/17/hyper-v-what-are-the-uses-for-different-types-of-virtual-networks.aspx

7. Using Hyper-V in Windows Server Core. Server Core is the new command line only installation option and its perfect for Hyper-V. For many people it can be hard to navigate and install new roles however. Below is a good link on installing Hyper-V in a Server Core environment.

http://blogs.technet.com/jhoward/archive/2008/03/30/how-to-add-the-hyper-v-role-to-a-windows-server-2008-server-core-machine.aspx

8. Remote Management. Managing Hyper-V installations, be they GUI or Server Core, is always a concern. An excellent two part article on this is located here:

http://blogs.technet.com/jhoward/archive/2008/03/28/part-1-hyper-v-remote-management-you-do-not-have-the-requested-permission-to-complete-this-task-contact-the-administrator-of-the-authorization-policy-for-the-computer-computername.aspx

and

http://blogs.technet.com/jhoward/archive/2008/03/28/part-2-hyper-v-remote-management-you-do-not-have-the-requested-permission-to-complete-this-task-contact-the-administrator-of-the-authorization-policy-for-the-computer-computername.aspx

9. Issues deploying virtual machines within a virtualized environment. I have seen this a lot internally, you have a RID/WDS server in a VM that you’ve used forever in Virtual Server. You decide to move that installation to Hyper-V and now you cant deploy new children VMs in Hyper-V. The problem here lies in the fact that you need to use the legacy network adapter rather than the synthetic device for the child VM you are trying to deploy to. We dont support PXE boot on the synthetic NIC in Hyper-V. You can add a Legacy NIC in the Add Hardware section of the Virtual Machine Settings.

10. One other virtualized hardware issue we have seen is SCSI boot. Or more specifically, the lack of it. We no longer support booting from the virtualized SCSI controller in Hyper-V. You can still use the SCSI controller for storage drives and you can utilize iSCSI or SAN storage as well, you just cant boot SCSI anymore.

Author: Joseph Conway
Support Escalation Engineer
Microsoft Enterprise Platforms Support

Ask the Core Team : 10 commonly asked questions or issues seen during Hyper-V beta

written by dcaddick

So this mornings news from Alessandro is the release of Hyper-V - Download a trial here.

I have also included at the bottom of this post a number of links that Justin Zarb helped collate regarding where to find all kinds of info relating to Hyper-V

Release: Microsoft Hyper-V 1.0

Thursday, June 26, 2008   |   0 Comments   |  

After over three years of development (the product was originally announced at WinHEC 2005 conference) Microsoft finally releases today its first bare-metal virtualization platform: Hyper-V.
During this very long process the product was delayed, changed name, and lost some planned key features.

Unlike Virtual Server and Virtual PC, Hyper-V is a type-1 virtual machine monitor (aka hypervisor) which features an architecture very similar to the one used by Xen and its commercial derivatives.
This allows a direct comparison with platforms like Citrix XenServer, Virtual Iron, the upcoming Sun xVM Server and obviously with VMware ESX.

Unlike the latter, Hyper-V adopts a microkernel developed from scratch (so it’s not the Windows kernel) which is less than 1MB in size and delegates most of the tasks to a so called Parent Partition.
Depending on the configuration you adopted, the parent partition automatically loads a full copy of Windows Server 2008 or the new Windows Server 2008 Core.

Being a first generation product, Hyper-V cannot really compete with the above in features, but it clearly offers a performance boost (up to +107% in case of disk I/O activity) and some much deserved improvements over Virtual Server 2005 R2:

• Support for 32bit and 64bit virtual machines
• Support for up to 4 virtual CPU per VM (the actual number depends on the guest OS)
• Support for up to 64GB RAM per VM
• Support for the Windows 2008/2003/2000, Windows XP/Vista and Novell SUSE Enterprise Linux guest operating systems
• Quick Migration (the capability to suspend, migrate and resume a VM from one host to another)
• Automatic patching through Windows Update and WSUS

……

Microsoft Hyper-V is fully integrated with Windows Server 2008 64bit so any download of the OS includes it. Download a trial here.
For those customers already using the beta or the release candidate of Hyper-V, the product will be updated through the Windows Update service beginning July 8.

To demonstrate how much the company bets on this new product, Microsoft is internally adopting Hyper-V since a while and already migrated inside its virtual machines all the web front-ends that serve TechNet and MSDN websites.

Now the customers wait for the upcoming System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008, currently in beta, to centrally manage Hyper-V (along with Virtual Server and VMware ESX), and MAP 3.1, in beta as well, to perform accurate capacity planning.

Release: Microsoft Hyper-V 1.0 | virtualization.info

Where should I look for Hyper-V Information?

So your looking for information on Hyper-V and struggling for where to look! So I wanted to get a nice bit of compiled information that Jeff did….

Websites

Microsoft Virtualization Home Page
Virtualization Case Studies
Virtualization Solution Accelerators
Windows Server 2008 Virtualization & Consolidation:
Hyper-V FAQ
Optimized Desktop Infrastructure (VDI and much more):
Virtualization TechCenter:
How to Install Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V RC
Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V Performance Tuning Guide
MSDN & TechNet Powered by Hyper-V
MSDN & TechNet Powered by Hyper-V Whitepaper

Blogs:

http://blogs.technet.com/virtualization/default.aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/virtual_pc_guy/
http://blogs.technet.com/jhoward/
http://blogs.technet.com/roblarson/
http://blogs.technet.com/virtualworld/
http://blogs.technet.com/windowsserver/
http://blogs.technet.com/mapblog/
http://blogs.technet.com/stbnewsbytes/

Webcasts:

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?culture=en-US&EventID=1032368894&CountryCode=US
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?culture=en-US&EventID=1032372420&CountryCode=US

written by dcaddick

A few weeks back I was asked to setup a demo Server for the Citrix Synergy event here in Sydney that was to be XenApp 5.0 64bit (Delaware – Release Review) on a Server 2008 64bit installed on a DL680 Blade Server with 32Gb of RAM. Now it would have been nice to have had some time to really put this unit under pressure and see what sort of load it could handle but unfortunately I didn’t get the time for that.

However, seeing as some of you might be thinking of doing something similar I thought it worth sharing my experiences, as hopefully this might at least save you some time? 

Please be aware that these issues were discovered installing the “Release Preview” ONLY and they should be resolved when the RTM code of XenApp 5.0 (Delaware) is released.

• Sun Java Runtime 1.5.0_11 (Update 11) does not appear to be recognized if x64 is installed? Wizard installation routine appears to be only checking for x86 install ONLY?
• The Wizard installation routine can be somewhat annoying because it would appear to scan for prerequisites at initialization (and then keeps quiet about it) but if things are missing it only informs you when you hit the snag some way through? This then requires you to cancel setup entirely and restart installation to get past “check/error” message…….
• I did not read through all the prerequisites (show me an Admin who would? ;-)) and yet it would appear to only mention .NET 3.0 is a prerequisite when .NET 3.5 is also required?
• When the installation of the management consoles started I kept getting an error:

  

  Eventually I just canceled this piece and let everything continue from here – I was unable to find the prerequisite component, and didn’t need Password Manager anyway…  (NOTE: this component was not in the Support Folder)

• I have found what I believe is correct file at:
  http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=DE37BFE4-7A5A-4767-BBE1-267418E0F1E7&displaylang=en but now that I review this I think this is not correct……
• Installing Licensing Server on the x64 appears to “break“ WI, so this was removed and placed on a std. Server 2003 – see error below

  

• Installed .NET 3.0 via Roles Console before rebooting and trying to install .NET 3.5
• Funnily enough the system insists on adding .NET 3.0 through the Roles and yet you can start 3.5 via the executable….
• I had to revisit IIS about 4 times to add additional functionality and then restart installation again…  very annoying, but ultimately my own fault for not reading the install guide? Here are some examples of what you’ll need to remember to install?
• 
• 
• And I did like the look of Server 2008’s IIS Manager – quite flash
• 

written by dcaddick

While the deployment we were assisting with today was maybe not that large even by local standards the issue was something that comes up on a some what regular basis.

A customer wants to have a number of Thin Clients imaged to their specifications and then drop-shipped to various locations ready to go. Part of this involves creating and applying Asset Tags to the devices – a small thing to be sure – but for the poor folks in charge of keeping track of the devices this was vital.

The issue was that part of the FBReseal (First Boot Reseal) process renames the devices based on a process that combines the MAC address and the serial number and then comes up with a random name, and of course that was not making things that easy for the “Asset Tagger’s”

So we were testing the imaging process at the Integrators site using Altiris as the deployment mechanism and trying to figure out how we might be able to achieve something that would leave everybody happy and we discovered “COMPNAME.EXE”

My hats off to Oli at Willowhayes.co.uk as this is a great tool that does exactly what we were after, but it clearly has some great functions that make it really well suited for RIS with references to UUID and the ability to create and reference fake UUID’s when needed.

It is so easy because you can easily see the info it can pull out via the summary switch (examples below) and then reference them via the template function – so in our specific case we simply called a job that ran “COMPNAME.EXE /c HP-?s” and this then appended the serial number after the HP- prefix.

Now it was possible for the customer to receive a spreadsheet of all the devices, including a listing of the specific Computer Names so that Asset Tags can be printed and applied ahead of delivery.

Summary switch provides the following info:
Mainboard manufacturer : Hewlett-Packard
          model        : 30C8
          serial       :
Chassis   manufacturer : Hewlett-Packard
          model        : Notebook
          serial       : 2CEXXXXH29
System    manufacturer : Hewlett-Packard
          model        : HP Compaq 2710p (#ABG)
          serial       : 2CE8060H29
Ethernet address       : 00:1F:3B:09:XX:XX
IP address             : 192.168.0.4
NetBIOS name           : xxxxxxxxxxx
DNS Host name          : xxxxxxxxxxx
System UUID            : 21FFBB999ADCXXXX111XXX8410012529

Switch Examples are:
?u = System UUID                        ?U = Fake UUID (24 zeros plus MAC).
?G = If System UUID is FFFF… or 0000… or null it uses ?U, otherwise ?u.
?i, ?j, ?k, ?l            = 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th octets of IP (decimal).
?I, ?J, ?K, ?L            = 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th octets of IP (hex).
?d = Hostname found by reverse DNS lookup of IP address.
?m = First MAC address.                 ?e = Existing NetBIOS computer name.
?D = day    ?M = month    ?Y = year
?1, ?2, ?3, …, ?0       = 1, 2, 3, …, 10 random alphanumeric characters.

COMPNAME /c acme-?s   Changes computer name to "acme-ABCDEF" where ABCDEF is the system serial number.

written by dcaddick

Well as far as I am aware, XPe as it stands to day will be available through till sometime in 2010, but it seems more news is getting out about is’s possible Vista based replacement? My personal view is that MS should take a deep hard look at the *LACK* of take up and interest in Vista before heading down this path anytime soon – but that doesn’t mean they won’t try regardless.

Now of particular note from the details below from Mary Jo Foley is the indication of the size of the OS? XPe may have a *core* size of 40Mb but it is typically 350Mb or so when deployed - does that mean that with a core of 300Mb for Quebec that the typical load will be around 2.5Gb and larger? If this is the case then it’s just as well that Flash manufacturers are able to keep making larger and larger memory modules?

But, really…. activation?? for an embedded OS – give me a break!!!  That is unless MS are going to repeal the restriction that they have always had with the embedded OS in that they have always insisted that you are NOT able to install any of the Office products locally?

Who know’s? is it that far fetched? Thin Clients are getting more powerful CPU’s, RAM is pretty cheap, Flash sizes are going up and the price is coming down and yet here is an OS that is cut down to what we’d probably want Windows 7 to be? It also has (should have?) either EWF (Enhanced Write Filter) or the File Based Write Filter to maintain it’s integrity?

Interesting times ahead?

Windows Embedded ‘Quebec’ due in 2010

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 6:23 am

Although it hasn’t said much about its plans for a Vista-based successor to its Windows XP-based  embedded operating system, Microsoft already is working on one.

Microsoft released during the first week of June a new test build of its latest Windows XP-based embedded operating system, known as “Windows Embedded Standard 2009,” the final version of which is slated to ship by the end of 2008.

However, Microsoft also is readying the 2010 successor to this product — another Windows Embedded release codenamed “Quebec.” Unlike the 2009 release of Windows Embedded, the Quebec product will make use of a number of features that are part of Windows Vista.

Microsoft is on tap to share some information about the Vista-based embedded release at its TechEd Developers Conference this week in Orlando. A first widescale Community Technology Preview (CTP) test build of Quebec is due out next year.

Microsoft’s Windows Embedded family of products, which Microsoft sells to device makers, is designed to power thin client terminals, point-of-service terminals, gaming devices, medical-imaging systems, DVRs and industrial-automation systems, among other products. Windows Embedded is not at the core of cell phones or ultra-low-cost PCs (ULPCs), however. Windows Mobile phones currently are built on top of a Windows CE-based core and ULPCs run full-fledged Windows. (Microsoft has OK’d ULPC makers shipping Windows XP on their systems through 2010.)

The forthcoming Quebec embedded release will include BitLocker drive encryption, Windows Firewall, Windows Defender, Address-Space Load Randomization — and on the memory-management front, support for SuperFetch, ReadyBoost and Dynamic System Address Space. On certain devices, the Quebec release will also provide as optional components Aero user-interface, Windows Media Player 11 and various Internet Explorer 7 features. Unlike Microsoft’s XP-based embedded releases, which are 32-bit only, Quebec will support both 32-bit x86 and 64-bit x64 processors.

Not surprisingly, support for all these features comes at a cost — size. According to a slide deck available to TechEd attendees, while Windows XP Embedded core’s minimum image size is around 40MB, according to a slide deck to be presented at TechEd on June 6, Quebec’s core is expected be around 300MB — not counting all the optional add-ons like Media Player, IE 7, etc.

The other cost is Quebec will require product activation; XP Embedded does not. The Quebec release will require basic retail activation or OEM activation. There will be a default evaluation product key that will allow the Quebec image to run for 30 days without activation.

Windows Embedded ‘Quebec’ due in 2010 | All about Microsoft | ZDNet.com

written by dcaddick

So if you have a look at the MSTSC.EXE file that starts the RDP session and use the /? to call further info from the component you get something very much like this:

But if you dig a just a touch deeper you will find that the MS Terminal Services Client or RDP Client as it is more commonly known draws the config information for most of its settings from the simple DEFAULT.RDP file that will typically be saved in the Users profile. (see example below)

So if you want to make changes to the way it behaves then it is fairly straightforward to make the changes in the GUI of the Client and then use the “Save As…” command from within the GUI – but what happens if you’d like to replicate this as standard behavior across multiple devices?

Search in the target computer to find the default.rdp file? (they should be hiding in each users profile) This is the settings that are used when the RDP Client is used – so open default.rdp in notepad or similar and you will find it is pretty straightforward to read?

Here in this example I have set the local C,D and E drives to be visible:

But at the same time some of these settings are pretty easy to guess at and start modifying with a reasonable degree of being able to accurately guess what they will change? I’ve highlighted some of the pretty obvious ones?

++++Example++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
screen mode id:i:2
desktopwidth:i:1280
desktopheight:i:800
session bpp:i:32     <<< Colour depth
winposstr:s:0,3,0,0,800,600
full address:s:
compression:i:1
keyboardhook:i:2    <<<Keyboard Shortcuts
audiomode:i:0   <<<Sound
redirectprinters:i:1   <<<attach local printers? 1 is on
redirectcomports:i:0
redirectsmartcards:i:0
redirectclipboard:i:1
redirectposdevices:i:0
drivestoredirect:s:C:;D:;E:;
displayconnectionbar:i:1
autoreconnection enabled:i:1
authentication level:i:0
prompt for credentials:i:0
negotiate security layer:i:1
remoteapplicationmode:i:0
alternate shell:s:
shell working directory:s:
disable wallpaper:i:1    <<<part of controlling “the experience”
disable full window drag:i:1
allow desktop composition:i:0
allow font smoothing:i:0
disable menu anims:i:1
disable themes:i:0
disable cursor setting:i:0
bitmapcachepersistenable:i:1
gatewayhostname:s:      <<<Part of the TS Gateway from here down
gatewayusagemethod:i:0
gatewaycredentialssource:i:4
gatewayprofileusagemethod:i:0
++++Example++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

If this is the case then make the changes to the user’s default.rdp – then use the “save as”… then test Test, and then replicate to the same location on all devices?

written by dcaddick

I have an old blog site at www.geekswithblogs.net/wallabyfan as well as the new one at www.techagility.info and things have been very quiet for the last three weeks or so as I have been under something of a cloud. It would appear that at some stage I may have inadvertently upset someone with one of my posts – and rather than approach me to discuss this the complaint has been forwarded in to local HP management here in Sydney.

I still have no details what so ever as to what the issue is (or was?) as no details have been forthcoming – however for the record I have updated my Disclaimer as detailed below:

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights. The opinions expressed within are my own and should not be attributed to any other Individual, Company or the one I work for.

I just happen to be a classic techie who is passionate about getting things to work as they should do (and are sometimes advertised and marketed as being able to?) and when I can I drop notes here to help others falling in to the same traps that I have fallen in to.

If this has helped then please pass it on - if you feel that I have commented in error or disagree then please feel free to discuss with me either publicly or privately?

Cheers,
Dave

Please respect this Disclaimer for what it is?

I do not, nor never have, or intended to claim that my opinions expressed here are anything to do with anyone else, or any other company.

As much as I may express an opinion here in public, it is public much in the way that you might have a discussion over a glass of wine with friends and family at the end of dinner, and as such please feel free to launch in with your own “take” on the matter at hand, just as you would at dinner?

Thanks,
Dave

written by dcaddick