Zeros & Ones

This article describes recommended updates to install to address issues when you are managing hosts or are performing a physical-to-virtual (P2V) conversion by using Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2.

Use the information in the "More information" section to help you determine whether a particular hotfix or update applies to your environment.

Now time for the collection

Press here... Or there :) http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2397711

do not forget that one too http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2308590

A very interesting question in Technet forums about VMM SSP high availability

Source

With its Cloud Manager software released on Monday, Novell hopes to address the vendor lock-in problem facing enterprises building private clouds.

Cloud Manager allows IT staff to manage virtualized resources that may be based on different hypervisors, including VMware, Microsoft's Hyper-V and Xen virtual servers, all from a single management tool, according to Novell.

Today, companies that have private clouds based on different hypervisors typically have to manage them separately, using tools from different vendors. But that can be complicated.

With a single management console, companies may be more likely to use a mix of hypervisors based on their needs, said Ben Grubin, director of data center management at Novell.

"What this allows you to do is make infrastructure choices based on what you need to do to support your business services, rather than trying to maintain a single unified stack," he said.

Microsoft is moving in a similar direction. Its Systems Center software can manage VMware as well as Hyper-V environments today, and Microsoft has said the next version, due next year, will manage Citrix XenServer as well. VMware's tools can manage only its own hypervisors.

Businesses may want to use hypervisors from different vendors depending on the applications they're running, Grubin said. VMware's software has the biggest market share and the most features but it is also more expensive, he said, and some applications don't require all those capabilities. He argued that companies can keep their costs down by using a lighter-weight, less expensive hypervisor for some applications.

Cloud Manager also includes tools that allow end users to provision their own computing resources, even those that may be hosted across data centers on multiple hypervisors. The provisioning console can display a catalog of services, as well as service tiers with different prices, that the end user can choose from.

When workers or business units want access to new services they typically have to call the IT department and work through a provisioning process that could take months. They may also have to pay for new hardware and software. Allowing them to self-provision resources from a private cloud cuts the time it takes to set up new services and allows them to pay only for the resources they use.

To use Cloud Manager, an enterprise connects the application server, which runs the self-service portal, to orchestration servers at data centers. Each orchestration server can communicate with infrastructures built on different hypervisors.

Novell has created an adaptor that will let users incorporate services running on Amazon EC2, but that capability is at the technology preview stage and not yet shipping, Grubin said. Novell's customers have told it they will want the ability to combine public and private clouds into a single management tool, he said. He expects that in the future, Cloud Manager will support any of the public cloud services that customers ask for.

Novell is not publishing pricing for Cloud Manager. It will sell a version that can run up to 25 workloads, to let customers try it out. They'll then be able to buy add-on packs that support up to 50 additional workloads, he said.

In addition to helping companies realize the benefits of private clouds, Cloud Manager may also help them to get past so-called "VM stall." Some organizations don't get past virtualizing 20 percent or 30 percent of their servers, because business units are reluctant to give up the "visibility, security or compliance" that they feel they get from physical servers, Grubin said.

"One thing the Cloud Manager offers is the ability to give that power back to the app owner, through things like the self-service portal and the ability to manage your own workloads," he said. "You have the visibility, cost transparency and accountability that are critical steps to getting over that hump."

This article describes recommended updates to install to address issues when you are managing hosts or are performing a physical-to-virtual (P2V) conversion by using Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2.

A very useful post from Deliberations from Dave

Hyper-V clustering is a pretty rock solid thing, and Live Migration (introduced as we all know with Server 2008 R2) is virtually identical to VMWare’s long-available VMotion technology – pick up a running VM, and move it to another host in the cluster without users noticing.

Continue there

NetApp team had a very interesting article on Hyper-V best practice (Source)

Microsoft® Hyper-V™ virtualization technology has been shipping for more than a year. Tech OnTap profiled the use of Hyper-V with NetApp® technology in several past articles, including an overview article and a detailed case study of one customer’s experiences.

NetApp has been involved with hundreds of Hyper-V deployments and has developed a detailed body of best practices for Hyper-V deployments on NetApp. Tech OnTap asked me to highlight the top five best practices for Hyper-V on NetApp, with special attention to the recently released Hyper-V Server 2008 R2.

• Network configuration
• Setting the correct iGroup and LUN protocol type
• Virtual machine disk alignment
• Using cluster shared volumes (CSVs)
• Getting the most from NetApp storage software and tools

You can find full details on these items and much more in NetApp Storage Best Practices for Microsoft Virtualization which has been updated to include Hyper-V R2.

BP #1: Network Configuration in Hyper-V Environments

There are two important best practices to mention when it comes to network configuration:

• Be sure to provide the right number of physical network adapters on Hyper-V servers.
• Take advantage of the new network features that Hyper-V R2 supports if at all possible.

Physical network adapters. Failure to configure enough network connections can make it appear as though you have a storage problem, particularly when using iSCSI. Smaller environments require a minimum of two or three network adapters, while larger environments require at least four or five. You may require far more. Here’s why:

• Management. Microsoft recommends a dedicated network adapter for Hyper-V server management.
• Virtual machines. Virtual network configurations of the external type require a minimum of one network adapter.
• IP storage. Microsoft recommends that IP storage communication have a dedicated network, so one adapter is required and two or more are necessary to support multipathing.
• Windows failover cluster. Windows® failover cluster requires a private network.
• Live migration. This new Hyper-V R2 feature supports the migration of running virtual machines between Hyper-V servers. Microsoft recommends configuring a dedicated physical network adapter for live migration traffic.
• Cluster shared volumes. Microsoft recommends a dedicated network to support the communications traffic created by this new Hyper-V R2 feature.

The following tables will help you choose the right number of physical adapters.

Table 1) Standalone Hyper-V servers.

Table 2) Clustered Hyper-V servers.

Table 3) Clustered Hyper-V servers using live migration.

Table 4) Clustered Hyper-V servers using live migration and CSV.

New network features. Windows Server® 2008 R2 supports a number of new networking features. NetApp recommends configuring these features on your Hyper-V servers and taking advantage of them whenever possible. Be aware that some or all of them may not be supported by your server and network hardware. (See sidebar for details.)

BP #2: Selecting the Correct iGroup and LUN Protocol Type

When provisioning a NetApp LUN for use with Hyper-V, you must specify specific initiator groups (iGroups) and the correct LUN type. Incorrect settings can make deployment difficult and performance can suffer.

Initiator groups. FCP and iSCSI storage must be masked so that the appropriate Hyper-V server and virtual machines (VMs) can connect to them. With NetApp storage, LUN masking is handled by iGroups.

• When dealing with individual Hyper-V servers or VMs, you should create an iGroup for each system and for each protocol (FC and iSCSI) that system uses to connect to the NetApp storage system.
• When dealing with a cluster of Hyper-V servers or VMs, you should create an individual iGroup for each protocol that the cluster of systems uses to connect to the NetApp storage system.

It’s easier to manage iGroups by using NetApp SnapDrive®. SnapDrive cuts down on the confusion because it knows which OS you are using and automatically configures that setting for your iGroups.

LUN types. The LUN Protocol Type setting determines the on-disk layout of the LUN. It is important to specify the correct LUN type to make sure that the LUN aligns properly with the file system it contains. (See the following tip for an explanation.) This issue is not unique to NetApp storage. Any storage vendor or host platform may exhibit this problem.

Tip: The LUN type you specify depends on your OS, OS version, disk type, and Data ONTAP® version. For complete information on LUN types for different operating systems, refer to the Block Access Management Guide for your version of Data ONTAP.

The following tables will help you choose the correct LUN type.

Table 5) LUN types for use with Data ONTAP 7.3.1 and later.

Table 6) LUN types for use with Data ONTAP 7.2.5 through 7.3.0.

BP #3: Virtual Machine Disk Alignment

Tip: This tip is closely tied to the previous one, since failure to follow the previous tip will result in misalignment. The problem of virtual machine disk alignment is not unique to Hyper-V, nor is it unique to NetApp storage. This problem exists in any virtual environment on any storage platform.

This problem occurs because, by default, many guest operating systems, including Windows 2000 and 2003 and various Linux® distributions, start the first primary partition at sector (logical block) 63. This behavior leads to misaligned file systems because the partition does not begin at a block boundary. As a result, every time the virtual machine wants to read a block, two blocks have to be read from the underlying LUN, doubling the I/O burden.

Figure 1) Virtual disk misalignment.

The situation becomes even more complicated when virtual machines are managed as files within the Hyper-V server’s file system, because it introduces another layer that must be properly aligned. This is why selecting the LUN type is so critical.

• NetApp strongly recommends correcting the offset for all VM templates, as well as any existing VMs that are misaligned and are experiencing an I/O performance issue. (Misaligned VMs with low I/O requirements may not benefit from the effort to correct the misalignment.)
• When using virtual hard disks (VHDs), NetApp recommends using fixed-size VHDs in your Microsoft Hyper-V virtual environment wherever possible, especially in production environments, because proper file system alignment can be reliably achieved only on fixed-size VHDs. Avoid the use of dynamically expanding and differencing VHDs where possible, because file system alignment can never be reliably achieved with these VHD types.

The best practices guide provides complete procedures for identifying and correcting alignment problems.

BP #4: Using Cluster Shared Volumes

Cluster shared volumes are a completely new feature in Hyper-V R2. If you’re familiar with VMware®, you can think of a CSV as being somewhat akin to VMFS (although there are significant differences).

A CSV is a “disk” that is connected to the Hyper-V parent partition and shared between multiple Hyper-V server nodes configured as part of a Windows failover cluster. A CSV can be created only from shared storage, such as a LUN provisioned on a NetApp storage system. All Hyper-V server nodes in the failover cluster must be connected to the shared storage system.

CSVs have many advantages, including:

• Shared namespace. CSVs do not need to be assigned a drive letter, reducing restrictions and eliminating the need to manage GUIDs and mount points.
• Simplified storage management. More VMs share fewer LUNs.
• Storage efficiency. Pooling VMs on the same LUN simplifies capacity planning and reduces the amount of space reserved for future growth, because it is no longer set aside on a per-VM basis.

CSV Dynamic I/O Redirection allows storage and network I/O to be redirected within a failover cluster if a primary pathway is interrupted. The following recommendations apply specifically to the use of CSVs and are intended to minimize the impact of I/O redirection:

• In addition to the NICs installed in the Hyper-V server for management, VMs, IP storage, and more (see Best Practice #1), NetApp recommends that you dedicate a physical network adapter to CSV traffic only. The physical network adapter should be a gigabit Ethernet (GbE) adapter at a minimum. If you are running large servers (16 LCPUs+, 64GB+), planning to use CSVs extensively, planning to dynamically balance VMs across the cluster by using SCVMM, and/or planning to use live migration extensively; you should consider 10 Gigabit Ethernet for CSV traffic.
• NetApp strongly recommends that you configure MPIO on all Hyper-V cluster nodes, to minimize the opportunity for CSV I/O redirection to occur. CSV I/O Redirection is not a substitute for multipathing or for proper planning of storage layout and networking, which will minimize single points of failure in production environments.
• Once you recognize that I/O redirection is occurring on a CSV, you may want to live migrate all affected VMs on the affected cluster node to another Hyper-V cluster node to restore optimal performance until any I/O pathway problems are diagnosed and repaired.

The best practices guide describes additional best practices that pertain specifically to backup and VM provisioning with CSVs.

BP #5: NetApp Storage Software and Tools

NetApp provides a variety of storage software and tools that can simplify operations in a Hyper-V environment. With the release of Hyper-V R2, minimum requirements have changed for many software elements:

• As a minimum, NetApp recommends using Data ONTAP 7.3 or later with Hyper-V virtual environments.
• The Windows Host Utilities Kit modifies system settings so that the Hyper-V parent or child OS operates with the highest reliability possible when connected to NetApp storage. NetApp strongly recommends that the Windows Host Utilities Kit be installed on all Hyper-V servers. Windows Server 2008 requires Windows Host Utilities Kit 5.1 or later. Windows Server 2008 R2 (Hyper-V R2) requires Windows Host Utilities Kit 5.2 or later.
• Highly available storage configurations require the appropriate version of the Data ONTAP DSM for Windows MPIO. Windows Server 2008 requires Data ONTAP DSM 3.2R1 or later. Windows Server 2008 R2 requires Data ONTAP DSM 3.3.1 or later. You should set the least queue depth policy when using MPIO. (This is the default setting.)
• NetApp recommends NetApp SnapDrive on all Hyper-V and SCVMM servers to enable maximum functionality and support of key features. For Microsoft Windows Server 2008 installations where the Hyper-V role is enabled and for Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008, install NetApp SnapDrive for Windows 6.0 or later. For Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 installations where the Hyper-V role is enabled and for Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 to support:
  • Existing features (no new R2 features), install NetApp SnapDrive for Windows 6.1P2 or later.
  • New features (all new R2 features), install NetApp SnapDrive for Windows 6.2 or later.
• NetApp SnapDrive for Windows 6.0 or later can also be installed in supported child operating systems that include Microsoft Windows Server 2003, Microsoft Windows Server 2008, and Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2.

For the latest information on supported software versions, refer to the NetApp Interoperability Matrix. (You must have a NOW™ (NetApp on the Web) account to access this resource.)

Conclusion

If you pay attention to the best practices I’ve outlined here, you can avoid most of the pitfalls of configuring your Hyper-V environment. For complete details on these procedures and much more, refer to the Hyper-V best practices guide and Hyper-V implementation guide.

Consider the following scenario:

• You are running Linux based virtual machines on Hyper-V with the 2.1 version of the Linux Integration Services installed.
• You apply an updated kernel in the Linux based virtual machine.

After applying the kernel update, the Linux based guest operating system fails to boot with “Unable to mount root file system”.

This problem occurs because the Linux Integration Services must be recompiled after a kernel upgrade to function.

To prevent this issue, enable Dynamic Kernel Module Support (DKMS) before applying kernel updates.

Check MS KB http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;2387594&sd=rss&spid=14134

The Service Measurement Index (SMI) is a standard method for measuring the end-to-end consumer experience for any number of IT services. The SMI Framework is designed to help organizations measure any number of IT services available to them, regardless of whether that service is internally provided or sourced from an outside company, and permits weightings of importance based upon the organization’s requirements as to what defines a good service.  From procurement and ongoing service levels, to business viability and security, the SMI Framework provides a holistic view into the entire customer experience for cloud service providers in six primary areas: Quality, Agility, Risk, Capability, Cost and Security. Users of the SMI Framework can not only compare cloud service vendors based on their specific business and technology requirements, they can also make dynamic, real-time decisions on where to best migrate an application. The Framework provides a single, standard way to evaluate, monitor and implement services demanded by the business. The framework was created by CA. and is, independently developed and run by a consortium of academic institutions and representatives of business and government.

SMI Ratings published on Cloud Commons

In order to provide a baseline of information to enable service comparisons, the Service Measurement Index is initially pre-populated through a research effort conducted by a leading analyst firm.  The responses are results from a set of indicator questions related to quality, agility, risk, cost and security that were asked of IT professionals across North America regarding the specific business services of eMail, CRM and eCommerce.  The 600 individuals who participated in this research effort, are at the manager level and above within organizations who have $5M+ in revenue as well as similarly sized non-profits. This invitation only business panel represented over 40 business profile dimensions, 24 job title categories, and was made up of decision-makers and influencers for the design or purchase of IT services.

You can interact with the SMI data  by accessing the ratings on business services through the provider directory in the marketplace section

Another interesting problem form Hyper-V forum, Cédric from Hyper-V forum had a problem with new installed Hyper-V server when he tried to connect to VMs.

From the Hyper-V Manager console, when you try to connect to a local VM, no problem. But when i try to connect to a VM owned by another node, you get the following Error.

“Remote Desktop Connection”.
An Authentication error has occured.
The specified data could not be encrypted.
Remote Computer: “FQDN of the targeted host”

All other operation (stop, start etc work perfectly).The cluster validation report was “all green”.

The cluster nodes have this hotfix installed.

• KB977238 (HV BPA)
• KB981791 (Stop Error on intel Westmere)
• And cumulative update 2 for operation manager 2007 R2.

After some digging with MS Support to find the cause of the problem it turns out to be a problem with CredSSP Kerberos ticket length, there is a KB for Windows 2008R2 that solved this issue.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/978918

This problem occurs because the CredSSP incorrectly encrypts the data when the size of the security token for the user account exceeds 16 kilobytes (KB).

To resolve this issue, install this hotfix on the terminal server that is running Windows Server 2008 R2 and on any Remote Desktop clients that are running Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2.

Michael Michael has posted a great blog that outlines exactly how to restore the metadata through the use of powershell scripts.

http://blogs.technet.com/b/m2/archive/2010/04/16/saving-and-re-applying-the-virtual-machine-metadata-in-vmm.aspx

The saved metadata can be applied later on in the event that you add and remove the host from VMM management. A scenario where this issue comes up is when something goes wrong with your host in VMM and you need to remove it from management and re-add it to VMM (the host can also be a cluster). Typically in a situation like this you will loose all the metadata associated with your virtual machines. Such metadata includes the custom properties, descriptions, tags, owner, cost center, etc. If it is 1 or 2 VMs, its not a big deal to add them back, but when you are talking about a cluster with 200 VMs it is quite an effort.

Error (2912)
An internal error has occurred trying to contact an agent on the vmmserver.contoso.com server.

Recommended Action
Ensure the agent is installed and running. Ensure the WS-Management service is installed and running, then restart the agent.

Cause:

During the ‘Make operating system virtualizable’ step, files are copied from the destination host (the server that will host the virtualized system) to the SCVMM Server. This BITS operation fails due to a certificate problem as indicated by the error 0x80072F0C (ERROR_INTERNET_CLIENT_AUTH_CERT_NEEDED).

Resolution:

To resolve this issue, remove the managed host from the SCVMM server and also delete any residual certificates from the host on the VMM server, then re-add the host:

1. On the SCVMM server, remove the managed host from the console. The steps on how to remove a managed host are outlined in the following TechNet article:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc956121.aspx (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc956121.aspx)

2. Now we need to locate and delete any certificates for the Host computer.

3. Open the Certificate console on the SCVMM server.

a. Open a new mmc and add the certificates snap-in.
b. Select the option of ‘computer account’ and ‘local computer’.
c. Select Finish and Ok to load the snap-in.

4. The certificates for the Host computer can be in any of the following locations.

a. Personal Certificates.
b. Trusted People (if the host is W2K8 or W2K8 R2).
c. Trusted Root Authorities (If the host is W2K3).

5. In each store, expand the Friendly Name field and locate the certificate[s] for the Host server that have a Friendly Name starting with ‘SCVMM_CERTIFICATE_KEY_CONTAINER’ followed by either the FQDN / IP address / NetBIOS name of the Host server and delete them.

6. Re-add the host in SCVMM which recreates the certificates as needed.

More Information:

SCVMM uses BITS to transfer payload between SCVMM managed computers. These data transfers are encrypted by using a self-signed certificate generated at the time a host machine is added to SCVMM. If these certificates are missing or corrupted from the SCVMM server or managed computers, the payload deployment job can fail. Deleting the certificates and re-adding the host will cause the certificates to be regenerated.

For the latest information on this issue see the following Knowledge Base article:

KB2385280 – P2V fails with Error 2912 0x80072F0C with System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 or System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2

J.C. Hornbeck | System Center Knowledge Engineer