Now Supports SCVMM 2008 R2 SP1 and VMM 2012!

WHAT IS VMMTRACE?

VMMTrace and VMMTraceALT capture detailed information on systems participating in a reproducible VMM problem. This is a verbose data capture and should be run for a short period of time while the problem is reproduced. VMMTrace has been used by IT professionals in the user community and at Microsoft for years.

Why are there two versions of this tool?!?

VMMTrace uses DebugView from Sysinternals to capture VMM data and produce readable text. The downside to the tool is that it must restart the VMMAgent and VMMService services prior to each trace. This is usually not a problem, but if you have many jobs running this will stop them and they will have to be restarted manually. VMMTraceALT does not require these two services to be restarted and thus may have less impact if you are continuously running jobs. Both tools produce the same output and are nearly identical in use.

WHEN?

VMMTrace and VMMTraceALT are a solid last step. When you’ve made it through the items below and are still are no closer to resolution you should consider capturing a trace.

• Review Application and System Event logs on the SCVMM server and Hosts involved in the problem

• Install all Updates and verify using the VMMUpdate utility

• Verify required basics again:

  • DNS resolution in all directions

  • Account running VMMService is located in ‘Administrators’ and ‘Virtual Machine Manager Servers’ groups on SCVMM server and Hosts

  • Hyper-V, Cluster and so on are healthy

HOW?

Download the tool below by clicking a big GREEN BUTTON. Then identify your scenario and run the tool on the right systems at the same time. Use an elevated command prompt. Generally, the trace must be run on the SCVMM server, in addition to systems as indicated below.

WHICH SYSTEMS DO I RUN THE TRACE ON?

Issue 1: Console crash or unable to connect
Collect traces from both the computer where you run Admin Console and the SCVMM Server

Issue 2: Add Hosts issues
Collect traces from the SCVMM Server and the Host system

Issue 3: Host status or VM issue
Collect traces from both the SCVMM Server and the Host in question

Issue 4: Cluster issues
Collect traces from a single Cluster Node and the SCVMM Server

  Download VMMTrace           Download VMMTraceALT

Quick link: http://tiny.cc/vmmtrace

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   jonjor

BrianMadden.com recently posted a great article on the upcoming feature of Dynamic Memory for Windows 2008 R2 Service Pack 1. The article focuses particularly on the impact for Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) deployments. For both reasons I recommend taking a moment to read the post. You may find yourself adopting SP1 sooner than you expected.

A closer look at the new "Dynamic Memory" feature of Hyper-V: is it worth it for VDI?

  jonjor