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Good Morning Folks!
For those of you that have attended the IT Camps here in the Western United States, we have been doing a hands on lab where we provide you with a VHD file, then walk you through the process of using the BCDEDIT.EXE command line utility to boot into that VHD file. The result is, when you power on/reboot your machine, you now see a Windows Boot Manager Screen with the entry for the VHD file we gave you.
Some people have asked about how to remove the extra item (or items if you had to do it more than once). This post is a walk through on how to use a 3rd party tool to easily clean up your Windows Boot Manager and get back to where you started before the IT Camp.
Step 1 – Figure out where you are
First, boot your system to your normal “host” desktop. This is the desktop you had before you attended the IT Camp. Once you are logged in, Click Start, then type “Advanced System”. You should see a Control Panel item – “View advanced system settings” – Select this
This will open the System Properties window to the Advanced Tab. now click the Startup and Recovery Settings button. you should now see the System Startup screen and a drop down for “Default operating system” click the drop down to see what items you have listed there -
You should see the entry(s) you made during the IT Camp in the list. I know some people had to do the Boot to VHD process more than once so you may have more than one entry. Write down the names of the entries you want to remove.
**Note** For those of you that were already configured to Dual Boot prior to the IT Camp, be sure that you do not write down the names of the entries that you want to keep!! Write down ONLY the items you wish to remove!!
Once you have made note of the items you wish to remove, make sure your original host operating system is set as the default and then OK. I recommend you check the properties one more time before proceeding to ensure you have the correct operating system set as the default.
Step 2 - Download and install Visual BCD Editor
The Visual BCD Editor is a 3rd party, GUI based tool that allows you to view and modify your Boot Configuration Database on Windows systems. I encourage you to check out the other functionality it provides. Please note that this is a 3rd party tool though, and Microsoft does not officially support the use of this tool. At the time of this writing, the current version of VisualBCD is 0.9.3.1 and is what I am using for this walkthrough.
Once downloaded, install VisualBCD to your system. Setup only asks for a path to install to and I selected the default path.
Step 3 – Run Visual BCD Editor
Once the install completes, you well have two icons on the desktop. I have not used the Dual-boot repair so you are on your own with that one. For this walkthrough, launch the Visual BCD Editor.
When VisualBCD starts, you will see a list of entries in the Boot Configuration Database (BCD) store. You should see all of the entries that were in the drop down from the previous System Startup properties screen as well as some entries named “Windows Recovery Environment”.
Step 4 – Cleaning things up
Now refer back to the list of entries you wrote down that need to be removed.
1) Select an entry from your list of loaders on the left 2) Verify the selected entry points to the path of the IT Camp HyperV.vhd file in the “ApplicationDevice” field on the right 3) Right-Click the selected loader entry on the left and Delete Selected Object – Confirm – Click OK ***DO NOT REMOVE the entry for your original host operating system!!***
1) Select an entry from your list of loaders on the left
2) Verify the selected entry points to the path of the IT Camp HyperV.vhd file in the “ApplicationDevice” field on the right
3) Right-Click the selected loader entry on the left and Delete Selected Object – Confirm – Click OK
***DO NOT REMOVE the entry for your original host operating system!!***
If you had to walk through the BCDEdit steps more than once during the IT Camp, repeat the above process for any other entries you need to remove.
Now you should go go back to the System Startup properties to verify that your original host operating system is the default operating system. once confirmed, you can reboot your machine. Your Windows Boot Manager will be cleaned up and you will come back to your original host desktop.
You can now delete, move, copy the IT Camp HyperV.vhd file as you wish!
Cheers!
Here are all of the IT Camps resources bundled into one page. I will get the .VHD file uploaded as well as the BCDEdit scripts and add them to this page as well.
Supplemental Information and Links
Boot to VHD Resources
Veeam Resources from the Redmond/Bellevue and Portland IT Camps
Downloads --
–Windows Server 2008 R2 Eval – aka.ms/Win2008Eval
–Windows Server “8” Eval – aka.ms/WinServer8Eval
–System Center 2012 Eval – aka.ms/SCEvals
First, I want to give a BIG thank you to Eric, Brian, and Chris from Veeam for taking part in the IT Camps with us! They gave some great information during the session and provided some great evaluation virtual machines to the attendees for folks to play with.
Be sure to check out the Veeam Blog for the latest information on what Veeam is doing with Microsoft Hyper-V!
Also, I wanted to remind folks of the Veeam nWorks Management Pack for VMWare that extends monitoring of VMWare ESX Servers within System Center.
Protect your investments in Microsoft System Center and manage your physical and virtual environment from one console with the Veeam nworks Management Pack™ for VMware. The nworks Management Pack provides scalable, fault-tolerant and agentless VMware infrastructure monitoring and management directly in Microsoft System Center, eliminating the need for a separate monitoring framework.
Protect your investments in Microsoft System Center and manage your physical and virtual environment from one console with the Veeam nworks Management Pack™ for VMware.
The nworks Management Pack provides scalable, fault-tolerant and agentless VMware infrastructure monitoring and management directly in Microsoft System Center, eliminating the need for a separate monitoring framework.
Finally, I want to give you some additional resources that were provided in the Veeam Sessions and Materials that I wanted to remind you of -
Microsoft Career Conferences and the Microsoft Certified Community Connection
This is a great resource for people who want to learn about Microsoft Private Cloud implementations and virtualization. This includes the 2-Day “Creating and Managing Private Clouds Jump Start” training and the 1-Day “Exam 70-659": Windows Server 2008 R2, Server Virtualization Jump Start” course.
Microsoft Virtual Academy
Improve your IT skill set and help advance your career with a free, easy to access training portal. Learn at your own pace, focusing on Microsoft technologies, gain points and get recognition.
Thanks for attending the IT Camps! Keep an eye on my blog for information on future IT Camps in your area!
Microsoft IT uses System Center Operations Manager 2012 to provide the monitoring of their datacenter, to delivering flexible and cost effective enterprise-class monitoring and diagnostics. Operations Manager 2012 reduces the total cost of ownership by leveraging commodity hardware, with standard configurations to monitor heterogeneous environments to ensure the availability of business-critical applications.
Video
Products & Technologies
· System Center Operations Manager 2012
· System Center Suite
· VMM 2012
· SCCM 2012
· DPM 2012
· SCOM 2012
I did get the Boot to VHD image problem resolved! Sometime tomorrow afternoon I will have a post up with a location where you can grab the .VHD file as well as instructions on how to edit your boot up info with BCDEDIT. I will also post information on how to remove that entry from the boot menu to clean things up if you like.
In the meantime, if you want to check out some information on how to Boot to VHD and how to use BCDEDIT, I have some links below -
Video – Adam Bomb - TechNet Edge - Boot from VHD in Win7
Blog Series - TechNet Edge - Windows 7 Boot from VHD
Blog - Scott Hanselman - Less Virtual, More Machine - Windows 7 and the magic of Boot to VHD
Downloadable Demo - Demonstration: Windows 7 VHD Boot
Our next monthly meeting is scheduled for Wednesday, April 4, 2012 at Lincoln Square Center in Bellevue at 6:00PM.
Session Details Our guest speaker will be Matt Tinney of Windows Management Experts. Matt is a Lead System Center Architect with over 15 years of experience working exclusively in the systems management arena. The topic of his presentation is "An Overview of System Center 2012." Matt will give an overview of Microsoft System Center 2012 which helps you manage your IT environments across traditional datacenters, private and public clouds, client computers, and devices.
System Center 2012 is a cloud and datacenter management solution that provides a common toolset to manage private and public cloud applications and services and:
Matt’s bio is available here.
New Members If you are a new member, directions to the Lincoln Center are available on our Web site, or you can click here. Meeting agenda and other details are available in the Announcements link. Feel free to contact us if you have any questions.
RSVP Please make sure that you RSVP so we can plan for the meeting accordingly.
We look forward to seeing you at the meeting!
Hello IT Campers! (and everyone else too!). I have compiled a brief list of resources for further reading on the topics we are covering at out on-going IT Camps. As more topics are submitted and discussed, I will add to this list, so please bookmark this post. I will tweet (@chrisavis) when I update.
If you are interested in attending an IT Camp in your area, please check out the info below!
IT Camps are semi-structured, no-fluff events exclusively designed to serve IT professionals. They are a free, in-person learning event for anyone seeking professional development as it applies to IT Professionals. The agenda is intended to deliver a technical overview and hands-on experience that is less formal or structured than traditional instructor-led training. Participants will have a chance to perform hands on activities / exercises individually or as a team. At the end of the day, we encourage everyone to share their thoughts and experiences with the rest of the group. Come prepared to have fun, be excited, and interact in a group.
For more information, check out on the registration links in a city near you!
March 15, 2012 Los Angeles, CA Harold Wong
March 15, 2012 Portland, OR Chris Avis
March 16, 2012 Phoenix, AZ Harold Wong
March 19, 2012 Denver, CO Harold Wong
March 19, 2012 Mountain View, CA Chris Avis
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IT Camp Resources
Migrate Server Roles to Windows Server 2008 R2
DHCP Server Migration Guide
File Services Migration Guide
Print Services Migration Guide
Video: Inside the new Server Migration Portal
Downloads for Private Cloud
System Center 2012 Evaluation
Windows Server “8” Evaluation
Windows Server 2008 R2 Evaluation
Some Network Considerations
For this post, I am going to address a variety of networking features and considerations that you will need to know when configuring your Hyper-V virtualization environment. Some of these items fit nicely together and are easy to group up. Others are somewhat of one-off situations. You won’t even necessarily implement any or all of these in your own network depending on what your infrastructure looks like. Regardless, it is important to understand the concepts to have a good understanding of Hyper-V implementations and of course….to pass the test!
Optimizing Traffic For Virtualization
If you intend to use the Microsoft iSCSI Target/Initiator software (or 3rd party iSCSI options) for connecting to iSCSI based storage, there are some network optimizations you can make to improve network performance. Before you make any changes to your Network based on your iSCSI implementation, I highly encourage you to read the following about Microsoft iSCSI implementations:
Microsoft iSCSI Software Initiator iSCSI Initiator Info from TechNet Microsoft iSCSI Software Target iSCSI Target Info from TechNet
Microsoft iSCSI Software Initiator
iSCSI Initiator Info from TechNet
Microsoft iSCSI Software Target
iSCSI Target Info from TechNet
Enabling Jumbo Frames for iSCSI performance gains
Enabling Jumbo Frames can dramatically increase network performance and also reduce CPU cycles under certain conditions. This only applies when you are doing large file transfers within your own network and not to/from the Internet.
Be sure to evaluate what kind of workloads you are running on your infrastructure and your host machines as well. Applications that are sensitive to latency issues (VoIP and other interactive real-time applications) can be impacted negatively by enabling Jumbo Frames. Also keep in mind that you can only enable Jumbo Frames on gigabit or faster networks and ALL devices between the source and target must be gigabit enabled.
Most network adapters will default to Jumbo Frames being disabled. The picture below is from my production Hyper-V server with a Realtek PCIe Gigabit Ethernet adapter installed. I do not use iSCSI currently and have no need for Jumbo Frames at this time so it is disabled.
When enabling Jumbo Frames, you will need to determine the maximum frame size you will allow. To determine this you will need to analyze your network traffic patterns and do some experimenting to determine what frame size delivers the best performance. Setting this too low and you will not get as much performance as you can. Set this too high and you will actually negatively impact performance as the frames get dropped and have to be resent.
As this applies to iSCSI and Virtualization – We would typically use iSCSI targets for shared storage of the VHD files used by Hyper-V. Since the files can be hundreds of gigabytes in size, the act of moving or migrating virtual machines means moving very large files. This would also apply to virtualized work loads that have a lot of change like database applications.
Enabling TCP/IP RX and TX Offloading
Many network adapters support IP Checksum Offloading. It may also be referenced as RX/TX Offloading.
When we are using iSCSI and virtualization, we can further optimize network traffic by enabling this on a network adapter. When enabled, the network adapter will take over the responsibility of verifying the checksum on incoming packets and computing the checksum for outgoing packets. This results in less CPU utilization and improved receive/transmit performance.
When the VHD files used for virtualization are stored locally, this option has little impact. When VHD files are stored remotely, such as with an iSCSI storage implementation, there is a lot of network traffic generated anytime there is disk I/O to the VHD file. Again, if you are make a lot of changes to the files/data stored within the VHD file, you will generate a massive amount of network traffic. Offloading the TX/RX checksums can help improve performance.
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Passing the Windows Server 2008 R2 Server Virtualization Exam (70-659) – Part 1
Passing the Windows Server 2008 R2 Server Virtualization Exam (70-659) – Part 2
Passing the Windows Server 2008 R2 Server Virtualization Exam (70-659) – Part 3
Installing and Configuring Host and Parent Settings
Passing the Windows Server 2008 R2 Server Virtualization Exam (70-659) – Part 4
Creating a new Guest Virtual Machine and available configuration options
Passing the Windows Server 2008 R2 Server Virtualization Exam (70-659) – Part 5
I’m a Developer! Why Virtualize?
Passing the Windows Server 2008 R2 Server Virtualization Exam (70-659) – Part 6
Exploring .VHD configurations and why/when to use them
Passing the Windows Server 2008 R2 Server Virtualization Exam (70-659) – Part 7a – This Post!
Miscellaneous Networking – Part A
Next week is our Bellevue IT Camp followed by Portland a couple of days later! This is going to be a GREAT event with some great content for the community. We have allocated a large block of time for open discussion and I am very interested in knowing what topics you would like to discuss. Please comment here or send to me in email or Twitter.
Also, we want to leverage the community as much as possible for peer-to-peer assistance. if you have an area of expertise that you feel you would like to offer up, please contact me so I can install you as an expert for the open topics discussion.
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To register, please visit the appropriate links for your city.
March 13, 2012 Bellevue, WA
March 15, 2012 Portland, OR
Join us for our upcoming IT Camp where we are changing the format and structure of our in-person events! We are implementing the following changes:
To participate in the afternoon session, you will need to bring your own computer (laptop preferred) with the following minimum configuration:
I encourage everyone to start posting suggestions for topics to be discussed during the Open Topics sections. Also, if you have a topic that you would like to discuss, then please say so when posting your comment to this blog post. I am a firm believer that we can all learn from one another as we all have unique experiences and talents that we bring to the table. I look forward to reading your topic suggestions and then seeing you at the events!!
Agenda and abstracts of Sessions
8:00 AM – 8:30 AM Check-In and Welcome
8:30 AM – 9:30 AM: Get out of Dodge: Migrating to Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1
Is your infrastructure still clinging to the 2003 x86 server architecture? But with every day that goes by, you worry more and more that the other shoe will drop. You know you have to bite the bullet and get these critical services over to more modern hardware paired with the current supported revisions of the server platform. These are the services that keep the lights on, the servers running and most importantly: the users happy! This demo-intensive session covers how to migrate essential services like DHCP, DNS, File/Print, Certificate Services and more.
9:30 AM – 10:30 AM: Veeam Presentation
Discover how System Center 2012 can be leveraged to manage coexisting private cloud technologies from the metal to the app! This session will focus on the following System Center 2012 components: Virtual Machine Manager, Orchestrator and Operations Manager and how each technology can manage both Hyper-V and VMware Hypervisor platforms.
10:45 AM – 12:00 PM: Open Topics
12:00 PM – 1:00 PM: Lunch
1:00 PM – 2:30 PM: Open Topics
2:45 PM – 4:00 PM: Hands-On-Lab: Configure Windows Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 (Free version)
There are many IT Pros who have expressed interest in using the free version of Hyper-V Server. In this hands-on-session, we will demystify the configuration steps necessary to get Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 up and running so you can start using the free tool. As most folks know how to install an OS, we will not bore you with a 35 minute install; instead we will provide a VHD file with the product pre-installed, but not configured. We will help everyone configure their machines to boot to VHD and complete the configuration steps.
Following the configuration of Hyper-V Server 2008 R2, you will import the System Center 2012 RC VMs provided by Veeam so you can also get guided hands-on-experience with their management product.
Windows Server “8” Preview is now available to download!
The next release of Windows Server, Windows Server "8", offers businesses and hosting providers a scalable, dynamic, and multitenant-aware, cloud-optimized infrastructure. It securely connects across premises and allows IT Professionals to respond to business needs faster and more efficiently. Windows Server:
I am grabbing the bits now and will have it on a test machine and I a few VM’s today!
-Cheers@!