1- Anti Virus:
Configure the real-time scanning component within the antivirus software to exclude the following directories and files:· Default virtual machine configuration directory (C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Hyper-V) · Custom virtual machine configuration directories · Default virtual hard disk directory (C:\Users\Public\Documents\Hyper-V\Virtual Hard Disks) · Custom virtual hard disk directories · Snapshot directories · Vmms.exe · Vmwp.exe
· If virtual machines are missing from the Hyper-V Management console, you must configure the antivirus exclusions, and then restart the Hyper-V Virtual Machine Management service. · If the error code was 0x800704C8, it is likely that the virtual machine configuration file was corrupted and the virtual machine may need to be re-created or restored from backup if restarting the Hyper-V Virtual Machine Management service does not resolve the issue.
961804 Creating or starting a Hyper-V virtual machine on Windows Server 2008 or Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 may fail with error: 0x800704C8
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;961804
2: volume mount points
How to configure volume mount points on a server cluster in Windows Server 2008
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/947021
3: Hyper-V Step-by-Step Guide:
Hyper-V Step-by-Step Guide: Hyper-V and Failover Clustering
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc732181.aspx
Step 3: Create a virtual network
You will need to perform this step on both physical computers if you did not create the virtual network when you installed the Hyper-V role. This virtual network provides the highly available virtual machine with access to the physical network.
To create a virtual network
1. Open Hyper-V Manager.
2. From the Actions menu, click Virtual Network Manager.
3. Under Create virtual network, select External.
4. Click Add. The New Virtual Network page appears.
5. Type a name for the new network. Make sure you use exactly the same name on both servers running Hyper-V.
6. Under Connection Type, click External and then select the physical network adapter.
7. Click OK.
To create a virtual machine
1. Open Hyper-V Manager. Click Start, point to Administrative Tools, and then click Hyper-V Manager.
2. If you are not already connected to the server that owns the shared storage, connect to that server.
3. From the Action pane, click New, and then click Virtual Machine.
4. From the New Virtual Machine Wizard, click Next.
5. On the Specify Name and Location page, specify a name for the virtual machine, such as FailoverTest. Click Store the virtual machine in a different location, and then type the full path or click Browse and navigate to the shared storage.
6. On the Memory page, specify the amount of memory required for the operating system that will run on this virtual machine. For example, specify 1024 MB to run Windows Server 2008.
7. On the Networking page, connect the network adapter to the virtual network that is associated with the physical network adapter.
8. On the Connect Virtual Hard Disk page, click Create a virtual hard disk. If you want to change the name, type new a name for the virtual hard disk. Click Next.
9. On the Installation Options page, click Install an operating system from a boot CD/DVD-ROM. Under Media, specify the location of the media, and then click Finish.
Do not start the virtual machine at this point. The virtual machine must be turned off so that you can make it highly available.
Procedure 2: Reconfigure automatic start action for the virtual machine
Automatic actions let you automatically manage the state of the virtual machine when the Hyper-V Virtual Machine Management service starts or stops. However, when you make a virtual machine highly available, the management of virtual machine state should be controlled through the Cluster service. In this step, you reconfigure the automatic start action for the virtual machine.
To reconfigure automatic start action for the virtual machine
1. In Hyper-V Manager, under Virtual Machines, right-click FailoverTest and then click Settings.
2. In the left pane, click Automatic Start Action.
3. Under What do you want this virtual machine to do when the physical computer starts?, click Nothing and then click Apply.
Step 7: Make the virtual machine highly available
To make the virtual machine highly available, you run the High Availability Wizard.
To make a virtual machine highly available
1. To open the failover cluster snap-in, click Start, click Administrative Tools, and then click Failover Cluster Management. (If the User Account Control dialog box appears, confirm that the action it displays is what you want, and then click Continue.)
2. Right-click Services and Applications and click Configure a Service or Application.
3. The High Availability wizard opens. Click Next.
4. On the Select Service or Application page, select Virtual Machine from the list and then click Next.
5. On the Select Virtual Machine page, check the name of the virtual machine that you want to make highly available and then click Next.
6. Confirm your selection and then click Next again.
7. The wizard configures the virtual machine for high availability and provides a summary. To see the details of the configuration, click View Report. To close the wizard, click Finish.
8. To verify that the virtual machine is now highly available, you can check in either one of two places in the console tree:
a. Expand Services and Applications. The virtual machine should be listed under Services and Applications.
b. Expand Nodes. Select the node on which you created the virtual machine. Under Services and Applications in the Results pane (the center pane), the virtual machine should be listed.
9. To bring the virtual machine online, under Services and Applications, right-click the virtual machine and then click Bring this service or application online. This action will bring the virtual machine online and start it.
Step 9: Test a planned failover
To test a planned failover, you use Failover Cluster Management to move this service or application to another node.
To test a planned failover
1. From the console tree, select Services and Applications and then point to FailoverTest.
2. Right-click the virtual machine, point to Move this service or application to another node, and click the name of the other node.
3. You can verify that the move succeeded by inspecting the details of each node.
Step 10: Test an unplanned failover
To test an unplanned failover, you stop the Cluster service.
To test an unplanned failover
2. From the console tree, select Nodes and then right-click the node that runs the virtual machine.
3. Select More Actions and then click Stop Cluster Service.
4. Click Stop the cluster service to confirm the action.
5. The virtual machine will be moved to the other node.
Windows Server 2008 Failover Cluster Management console for Hyper-V Update (KB 951308)
Increased functionality and virtual machine control in the Windows Server 2008 Failover Cluster Management console for the Hyper-V role (KB 951308) is now available. The KB (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/951308O describes the changes in the hotfx that update the Failover Cluster Management console (the Cluadmin.msc file) and server components of the failover cluster, including:
4:
Step by step with pictures:
http://www.servercare.nl/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=61
http://blogs.technet.com/josebda/archive/2008/06/17/windows-server-2008-hyper-v-failover-clustering-options.aspx
5:
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION AND RECOMMENDATIONS:
VLAN Settings and Hyper-V
http://blogs.msdn.com/virtual_pc_guy/archive/2008/03/10/vlan-settings-and-hyper-v.aspx
Understanding Hyper-V VLANs
http://blogs.msdn.com/adamfazio/archive/2008/11/14/understanding-hyper-v-vlans.aspx
Hyper-V Getting Started Guide
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=105293
Hyper-V Planning and Deployment Guide
http://download.microsoft.com/download/8/1/5/81556693-1f05-494a-8d45-cdeeb6d735e0/HyperV_Deploy.doc
Virtualization Role
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc755090.aspx
Hyper-V TechCenter
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc534980.aspx
Virtualization site
http://www.microsoft.com/virtualization/default.mspx
Trunked and port channelled virtual switch
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/forums/en-US/winserverhyperv/thread/b869ce4b-6902-4a94-95a5-1ea8d4b39e77/
AskCore Blog Hyper-V section
http://blogs.technet.com/askcore/archive/tags/Hyper-V/default.aspx
6: Storage
Physical Storage:
· Hyper-V offers flexible storage support such as:
o Direct Attach Storage (DAS): SATA, eSATA, PATA, SAS, SCSI, USB, FIrewire
o Storage Area Networks (SANs): iSCSI, Fiber Channel, SAS
o Network Attached Storage (NAS)
Virtual Hard Disks:
· Dynamically Expanding Virtual Hard Disks:
o Default type maximum size up to 2040 GB each
· Fixed Size Virtual Hard Disks:
o Maximum size up to 2040 GB each
· Pass-through disks
o No size limitation other than what is supported by the guest operating system
Virtual Storage:
· Total storage per virtual machine:
o Using virtual hard disks, each virtual machine supports 512 TB of storage per vm
o Using pass-through disks, this number is even greater depending on what is supported by the guest operating system;
Hyper-V Question:
Q: My customer has been testing the amount of I/O capable through a virtual machine and are very impressed. Hyper-V seems to provide superior I/O capabilities. However, in some cases it appears that the virtual machine has performance GREATER than the native physical hardware. Does Hyper-V employ some additional disk caching?
A: No. Hyper-V does not employ additional disk caching other than what is utilized by the guest operating system. By leaving the disk caching up to the guest operating system, this ensures that virtual machines perform disk operations in the same manner as physical computers and applications written with custom caching schemes perform correctly without modification. We made the conscious decision to not employ additional caching to ensure that an I/O will never be reported complete until it’s been written to the physical disk.
Q: So, if Hyper-V doesn’t employ additional caching, how is this possible?
A: In actuality, Hyper-V is never faster than the physical storage stack. This increased performance is due to the fact that Hyper-V batches up multiple requests, keeps the hardware busy, and coalesces interrupts for great efficiency and superior performance. A few other points from our own internal testing about disk performance are:
1. Pass-through disks can sustain physical device throughput
2. Fixed VHDs can also sustain physical device throughput at the cost of slightly higher CPU usage
3. Dynamically expanding and differencing VHDs usually do not hit physical throughput numbers due to expansion overhead and greater likelihood of disk fragmentation
Q: Hyper-V offers dynamically expanding virtual hard disks, fixed virtual hard disks and pass-through disks. What are the pros and cons of each? Which option should I use when? What offers the best performance?
A: Before we dive into the topic, let me point out that there’s no one correct answer for all scenarios. Hyper-V offers different storage options to provide our customers the best solution for their particular scenario. Each option has its pros and cons.
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Dynamically Expanding Virtual Hard Disks
Dynamically expanding virtual hard disks are virtual hard disks that start off very small (just a few megabytes in size) and grow as data is written to the virtual hard disk. By default, Hyper-V creates dynamically expanding virtual hard disks.
When you create a dynamically expanding virtual hard disk, you specify a maximum file size. The default maximum size is 127 GB, (and they can be as large as 2 TB…) The maximum size specified at creation restricts how large the virtual hard disk file size can grow. For example, if you create a 127 GB dynamically expanding virtual hard disk, the initial size of the .vhd file is about 3 megabytes (MB). As the virtual machine uses the virtual hard disk, the size of the .vhd file grows as data is written the vhd up to 127 GB. If you hit the limit, you can expand the size through the Hyper-V Disk Wizard.
Because dynamically expanding virtual hard disks grow as required, a dynamically expanding virtual hard disk is likely to become fragments on the host computer's physical hard disk. Therefore, depending on how fragmented the host computer's physical hard disk is, it could impact performance depending on the amount of fragmentation.
Pros:
· Efficient. Dynamically expanding virtual hard disks grow dynamically as the virtual machine needs more storage. Great for portability.
Cons:
· Deferred Storage Allocation. Suppose you created 10 virtual machines with a maximum size of 100 GB each and you placed these on a 500 GB disk. These 10 virtual machines may all fit easily within 500GB when you create them; however, over time as those disks grow it’s possible that they outgrow storage because the disk resources aren’t allocated upfront.
· Fragmentation and possibly slight performance impact. Because dynamically expanding virtual hard disks grow only when needed, they tend to fragment easily. In addition, when the virtual hard disks grow, NTFS automatically zeros the new allocation (for security) which has a very small performance overhead.
Fixed-Size Virtual Hard Disks
Fixed size virtual hard disks are virtual hard disks that use as much physical disk space as specified when the disk is created. For example, if you create a 100 gigabyte (GB) fixed size virtual hard disk, it will use 100 GB of physical disk space when you click create even if the disk is completely empty.
Unlike dynamically expanding virtual hard disk, fixed-size virtual hard disks don’t grow so fragmentation issues are less likely (especially if you creating vms on a new storage array). Additionally, because fixed-size virtual hard disk do not expand before data is written to a file in a virtual machine. Therefore, fixed-size virtual hard disks generally provide better performance.
· Performance. When fixed-size virtual hard disks are created, all of its disk space is allocated immediately which is more likely to be contiguous. Furthermore, since fixed size virtual hard disks don’t grow dynamically, NTFS doesn’t need to automatically zero new allocations like with dynamically expanding virtual hard disks. One important note about fixed-size virtual hard disks is that they perform so well that they’re about equal to pass-through disks in terms of performance. This is testament to Hyper-V’s new driver enlightenment architecture.
· Upfront Storage Resource Allocation. When fixed-size virtual hard disks are created, disk resources are immediately allocated all of their disk space immediately.
· Portability. If you created a 127 GB fixed virtual hard disk, but you’re using only 1 MB, you would still need to copy all 127 GB from one server to another.
Pass Through Disks
With both dynamic and fixed-size virtual hard disks, the VHD is a file on disk. Pass-though disks are a different type of storage option where a LUN is associated with a virtual machine and the virtual machine writes directly to the LUN without encapsulation in a virtual hard disk. With pass-through disks, there is no vhd.
· Performance. Like fixed-size disks, pass through disks are very fast. Keep in mind that fixed -size virtual hard disks perform so well that they’re just about equal to pass-through disks. This is testament to Hyper-V’s new driver enlightenment architecture.
· Support for >2 TB per disk. Virtual Hard Disks are “limited” J to only up to 2 TB in size each. With pass-through disks, the limit per disk is whatever is supported by the guest operating system and the size of your physical storage.
· Can’t use VM Snapshots. When you create a virtual machine snapshot, Hyper-V is asynchronously saving the state of a virtual machine and creating a differencing disk. We can’t do that with a physical disk…
· Portability & Encapsulation. With virtual hard disks, everything is encapsulated in a file(s) which makes them portable. With pass through disks,
Q: How would you rank storage performance for these three options?
A: I’d rank them as follows:
1. Pass-Through Disk/Fixed-Size Virtual Hard Disk
2. Dynamically Expanding Virtual Hard Disk
Pass-through disks and fixed size virtual hard disks are about the same in terms of performance.
Q: Since pass-through disks and fixed-size virtual hard disks offer about equal performance how should a customer determine which one to use?
A: IMHO, I would recommend using fixed-size virtual hard disks instead of pass-through disks because fixed-size virtual hard disks offer high performance equal to pass-through disks and the following reasons:
1. Portability. Because data is within a vhd and you can easily move it
2. VM Snapshots. You can use virtual machine snapshots with fixed-size virtual hards disks and you can’t with pass-through
Q: Can you use Quick Migration with the dynamic, fixed and pass through disks?
A: Yes. Quick Migration can be used with any of these storage options.
•
Behavior change when you add a pass-through disk to a virtual machineBefore you install this update, when you add a pass-through disk to a virtual machine that is already a failover cluster resource, and the disk is located on a different failover cluster node than the virtual machine, the status in the Failover Cluster Management console shows that the configuration change is successful. However, the configuration change is not successful.After you install this update, the Failover Cluster Management console correctly shows that the configuration change is not successful. Note To correct the configuration problem, the physical disk resource for the pass-through disk should be moved to the failover cluster node that hosts the virtual machine. This should be done before it is added to the configuration of that virtual machine.
http://blogs.msdn.com/clustering/
Configuring Pass-through Disks in Hyper-V
http://blogs.technet.com/askcore/archive/2008/10/24/configuring-pass-through-disks-in-hyper-v.aspx
Cluster Resource Type options for Hyper-V
http://blogs.technet.com/askcore/archive/2008/07/27/cluster-resource-type-options-for-hyper-v.aspx
7: dc in hyper- v
There are some very specific guidelines for virtul DCs.
Some important points include:
· Recommended placements of virtual DCs include branch office sites with a small population (20 or less)
· Recommendations for where not to place virtual DCs:
1. Don't place them in locations where mission-critical services like Exchange require a domain controller
2. Don't use them to host Flexible Single Master Operation (FSMO) roles
3. Don't use them as Global Catalogs for Exchange servers
4. Don't use them for bridgehead roles
Q: Are there any best practices and tips for running domain controllers within Hyper-V?
A: Yes. Domain controllers can run just fine within Hyper-V; however, there are a few important things to remember.
Domain controllers should not be time shifted meaning you should never save state a domain controller.
The last thing you want to happen is to save state a domain controller for a few months, restore it and then have it come back online (way out of date) and possibly create synchronization issues on the domain!
So, if you’re using a domain controller within Hyper-V, turn on the virtual machine, use it and completely shut it down if you need to, but no saved states.
In addition, Hyper-V includes new virtual machine snapshot capabilities which allow you to move to different points in time by creating save states and attaching new differencing disks asynchronously and on the fly.
It’s really cool, but like saved states, you do NOT want to use snapshots with domain controllers.
So when running a domain controller within a Hyper-V virtual machine do NOT use:
1. Save states OR,
2. Virtual machine snapshots
In addition, the AD team wrote both a whitepaper and a KB article discussing this topic further which I highly recommend. I’ve also heard through the grapevine that these will be getting updated taking Hyper-V into account.
Running Domain Controllers within Virtual Server 2005
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=64DB845D-F7A3-4209-8ED2-E261A117FC6B&displaylang=en
Considerations when hosting Active Directory domain controller in virtual hosting environments
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/888794/en-us
8: Performance in HYPER-V
If it is Hyper-V, then be sure you are looking at “\Hyper-V Hypervisor Logical Processor(*)\% Total Run Time” versus “\Processor(*)\% Processor Time” because “\Processor(_Total)\% Processor Time” does not measure the real processor usage of the physical processors because the host computer (root partition) is more or less considered another virtual computer and is only measuring the CPU of the root partition (host) only.
Here is a white paper which talks about how to evaluate Hyper-V performance using performance counters.
Please read the “Measuring Processor Performance” section.
Measuring Performance on Hyper-V
Measuring Disk I/O Performance
Measuring Memory Performance
Measuring Network Performance
Measuring Processor Performance
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc768535.aspx
Hyper-V V1:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd430893(WS.10).aspx
Hyper-V R2:
975530 Stop error message on an Intel Xeon 5500 series processor-based computer that is running Windows Server 2008 R2 and that has the Hyper-V role installed: "0x00000101 - CLOCK_WATCHDOG_TIMEOUT"
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;975530
974672 Virtual machines stop responding (hang) during startup and the Vmms.exe process crashes on a Windows Server 2008 R2 computer that has the Hyper-V role installed
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;974672
975354 A Hyper-V update rollup package is available for a computer that is running Windows Server 2008 R2
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;975354
974598 You receive a "Stop 0x0000007E" error on the first restart after you enable Hyper-V on a Windows Server 2008 R2-based computer
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;974598
976246 When you remove a virtual hard disk from a virtual machine in System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2, the .vhd file on the Hyper-V server is deleted without warning
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;976246
974909 The network connection of a running Hyper-V virtual machine is lost under heavy outgoing network traffic on a Windows Server 2008 R2-based computer
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;974909
975688 A snapshot may become corrupted when the Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) snapshot providers take more than 10 seconds to create it on a computer that is running Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;975688
976639 The Virtual Machine Manager Service crashes when you add a virtual machine host that has more than 16 logical processors in VMM 2008 R2
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;976639
976640 How to troubleshoot the "Not Responding" host status in VMM 2008
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;976640
976724 The SUSE Linux Enterprise network configurations are lost after a Hyper-V Live Migration
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;976724
976924 You receive Windows Time Service event IDs 24, 29, and 38 on a virtualized domain controller that is running on a Windows Server 2008-based host server with Hyper-V
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;976924
977509 A pass-through disk that is assigned to a virtual machine is not migrated when you upgrade to Windows Server 2008 R2
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;977509
977517 A computer that is running VMware cannot create a TCP connection to a NFS server that is running Windows Server 2008 R2
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;977517
972045 Slow system response together with many other performance issues occur on a virtualization server that is running Windows Server 2008 and that has the Hyper-V role installed
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;972045
IF we have AMD cpu and w2k3 VM/s
· Explanation for the USEPMTIMER switch in the boot.inihttp://blogs.technet.com/perfguru/archive/2008/02/18/explanation-for-the-usepmtimer-switch-in-the-boot-ini.aspx