Zeros & Ones

Improve your Hyper-V Virtual Availability – Live Migrate VMs on Shutdown

Fawzi — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 02:40:00 GMT

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

Top Five Hyper-V Best Practices

Fawzi — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 02:38:00 GMT

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.

#Hyper-V: #Linux Integration Services no longer function after a kernel upgrade

Fawzi — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 02:38:00 GMT

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

Cloud Service Experience: The Service Measurement Index (SMI)

Fawzi — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 02:38:00 GMT

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

Hyper-v Error When you connect to VM “An Authentication error has occured.”

Fawzi — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 02:36:00 GMT

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.

Quote of the Month

Fawzi — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 20:14:00 GMT

“The computer was born to solve problems that did not exist before.”
– Bill Gates

VMM tricks: Saving and re-applying the #virtual machine metadata in #VMM

Fawzi — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 21:30:00 GMT

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.

P2V fails with Error 2912 0x80072F0C with System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008

Fawzi — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 21:38:00 GMT

When using System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) to perform a Physical to Virtual (P2V) conversion, the job may fail at 60% with the following error:

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

Virtual Storage Integrator for Hyper-V

Fawzi — Sat, 21 Aug 2010 13:19:00 GMT

Scott form blog.scottlowe.org shared yesterday a very cool stuff, thank you for sharing it.

Most of my virtualization focus centers on VMware and its product portfolio, but VMware isn’t the only virtualization solution in town. I’m sure they (VMware) probably wish they were the only solution in town, but competition keeps everyone on their toes. (Consider Proverbs 27:17.)

With that thought in mind, I wanted to bring everyone’s attention to a new Hyper-V plug-in from EMC: the Virtual Storage Integrator (VSI) for Hyper-V.

Much like VSI for vSphere, the VSI for Hyper-V provides additional visibility from System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) into the storage layer. The VSI for Hyper-V has two components: Storage Viewer and Disaster Restart: The Storage Viewer component provides mappings from NTFS volumes to the underlying CLARiiON or Symmetrix devices, mappings from LUNs to VMs, and mappings from storage array to Hyper-V hosts, including array target ports. In this regard, it is quite similar to the Storage Viewer component of VSI for vSphere.

The Disaster Restart component displays disaster recovery sites, groups of VMs online at each site, and enables live migration/quick migration of individual VMs or the ability to migrate cluster groups. PowerShell cmdlets are available to automate the complete functionality of the VSI for Hyper-V. If you’re interested, you can download the VSI for Hyper-V for free from PowerLink (login needed). Here’s a link to the download on PowerLink.

Creation date wrong for snapshots on VMs imported to Hyper-V 2008 R2

Fawzi — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 23:04:00 GMT

I think this forum post is deserve sharing

Situation : Windows Server 2008 R2 with latest patches (SP1 beta is NOT installed)

Windows Server 2008 SP2 with latest patches

CreationTimes for snapshots of virtual machines that were originally created on the same server are correct.

CreationTimes for snapshots of virtual machines that have been exported/imported between 2008 SP2 virtual hosts are correct.

But CreationsTimes for snapshots of virtuals that have been exported and imported onto 2008 R2 virtual hosts are incorrect.

Cause of the issue: As per Vincent Hu Hyper-V product team is aware of it.

For CreationTime property we rely on configuration file creation time until someone calls SetCreationTime() on configuration. Once SetCreationTime is called, we add a property, "creation_time", to config xml file and subsequent GetCreationTime() call will get its value from this property. While taking snapshot we do not call SetCreationTime() and hence, after import, the newly created snapshots also get incorrect creation time.

Here is the workaround: Removing the creation_time data from the vm's configuration file.

Clustering in Hardware Virtualization Environments

Fawzi — Sun, 15 Aug 2010 08:23:00 GMT

So this is an interesting topic… Server virtualization technologies have become so simple and efficient for most organizations.. Using the advanced technologies to provide high availability like ( Hyper-V Live and Quick migration or VMWare VMotion ) had make things easier to keep your VMs HA and retain your SLA. Although that using Clustering technologies have some recommendations based on the used technology.. MS Exchange team already published recommendations for running Exchange in the Virtualization Environments.

Part of it was “We recommend using the built-in Exchange Server high availability solutions for virtualized Exchange servers instead of hypervisor-provided clustering or portability solutions (such as Hyper-V’s quick migration feature). The features found in Exchange Server (in particular, cluster continuous replication (CCR)) provide greater benefits than those found in hypervisor solutions that move virtual machines between physical root machines.

We do not recommend using hypervisor-based virtual machine migration (such as Hyper-V’s quick migration) for virtualized Exchange servers. In a virtual machine migration configuration, an unscheduled outage can result in data loss. In a CCR environment, this type of data loss is largely mitigated by a feature called transport dumpster. The transport dumpster takes advantage of the redundancy in the environment to reclaim some of the data affected by the failover.”

So what about the rest of technologies like File Server clusters or DHCP. What if you want to implement DHCP and File Server Clusters ( Guest Clustering ) over Hyper-V hosts Cluster ( Cluster over Cluster ) ?

is that supported ? Do we have any limitations or well known problem with that ?

It takes some search and some support from Microsoft and hereunder the answer

This would be a combination of guest clustering and host clustering. This scenario would be working as long as you pass the cluster validation report.

Here are some tips for combing guest and host clustering for your information.
• Affinity – It is recommended that the nodes of a guest cluster should reside on different hosts to achieve the highest levels of availability. If a host were to crash, having VM’s associated with the same guest cluster distributed across multiple hosts will enable applications to recover faster. To accomplish this, configure the cluster group property AntiAffinityClassName. The host cluster will attempt to keep VM’s with a consistent string value (such as the VM name) off the same host. See this KB for additional details: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/296799
• Heartbeat Thresholds – It may be necessary to increase the cluster heartbeat thresholds of a guest cluster when a mobile guest VM node is being moved to a new host, through a process such as live migration. During the migration of the VM it will be temporarily unavailable for a brief period of time which cluster health detection may detect, increasing the thresholds will mitigate clustering assuming the node is down and incorrectly taking recovery actions. This can be accomplished by increasing the SameSubnetThreshold and SameSubnetDelay cluster common properties. See this document for additional details: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd197562(WS.10).aspx

So you can provide more redundancy for your VMs by providing a combination of host and guest clustering and get rid of your down time.

Some useful links

Hyper-V Guest Clustering Step-by-Step Guide

http://blogs.technet.com/b/mghazai/archive/2009/12/12/hyper-v-guest-clustering-step-by-step-guide.aspx

Failover Clustering & NLB Documents and Resources

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/clustering/archive/2009/08/21/9878286.aspx

Hyper-V: Using Hyper-V and Failover Clustering

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc732181(WS.10).aspx

New KB Article: Configuring Certificates for Virtual Machine Connection

Fawzi — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 12:50:00 GMT

Hyper-V team just published a new KB article called “Configuring Certificates for Virtual Machine Connection“ that talks about the way Hyper-V uses certificates and how to set it up. They also explain why we need them, something that might help new users and customers. This article provides information to folks who need to set this up and to folks who wanted to know how to work around wildcard certs.

It was put together by a member of our Test team, Krishna, at the request of our product support folks and now it’s here for you.

Enjoy it

Virtualization of Office Communications Server 2010 “aka Wave 14 “

Fawzi — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 12:49:00 GMT

A while ago I wrote about virtualization of Office Communication Server 2007 R2, OCS 2007 R2 had a limited supportability for virtualization” Only the Presence, IM (including remote access, federation, and PIC) and Group Chat workloads”.

The next release of Office Communications Server and Communicator together with Exchange 2010 is currently referred to as UC “Wave 14″ (code-name). The latest publicly available release date is in “late 2010”.

With Wave 14, OCS 2010 will support virtualization .. Yes it will

What’s supported?

Virtualization of specific Communications Server roles
SQL, Exchange, and AD virtualization where appropriate
Hyper-V R2 (not R1)
Client virtualization (except Audio / video) – use IP phone

“client virtualization technologies such as Citrix is supported for IM and meetings but audio and video is NOT supported . Microsoft’s recommendations is to use an IP phone if virtualized desktops are used.”

What’s not supported?

Branch office / gateway only / mediation server + gateway
Standard edition servers (already a single box)
Live Migration of Communications Server VMs

Hyper-V Linux Integration Services v2.1 Now ready

Fawzi — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 12:48:00 GMT

We are really excited to announce the availability of the Hyper-V Linux Integration Services for Linux Version 2.1. This release marks yet another milestone in providing a comprehensive virtualization platform to our customers. Customers who have a heterogeneous operating system environment desire their virtualization platform to provide support for all operating systems that they have in their datacenters. We have supported Linux as a guest operating system on our virtualization platform from the days of Virtual Server and continue to enhance our support in that regard.

The following features are included in the 2.1 release:

Driver support for synthetic devices: Linux Integration Services supports the synthetic network controller and the synthetic storage controller that were developed specifically for Hyper-V.

Fastpath Boot Support for Hyper-V: Boot devices take advantage of the block Virtualization Service Client (VSC) to provide enhanced performance.

Timesync: The clock inside the virtual machine will remain synchronized with the clock on the host.

Integrated Shutdown: Virtual machines running Linux can be gracefully shut down from either Hyper-V Manager or System Center Virtual Machine Manager.

Symmetric Multi-Processing (SMP) Support: Supported Linux distributions can use up to 4 virtual processors (VP) per virtual machine.

Heartbeat: Allows the host to detect whether the guest is running and responsive.

Pluggable Time Source: A pluggable clock source module is included to provide a more accurate time source to the guest.

This version of the integration services for Hyper-V supports Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 SP3, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.2 / 5.3 / 5.4 / 5.5.

Customers can obtain the Linux IC’s via the Microsoft Download Center at this link: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=eee39325-898b-4522-9b4c-f4b5b9b64551

Batch Script to Auto Update Sysinternals Tools

Fawzi — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 12:47:00 GMT

While the Microsoft Sysinternals tools are incredibly powerful and useful, the one feature they lack is the ability to check for new versions. Currently, you have to periodically check the Sysinternals site and compare versions between your system and the most recent official release in order to stay up to date.

As a better solution, Jason Faulkner have created a batch script which will automatically update the Sysinternals tools you have on your system. All you have to do is put the batch script file into the folder where your Sysinternals tools are located and the script does the rest, no configuration is needed.

Check it there