Virtual Machine Management : Virtual Server

How Virtual Machine Manager Administrator Console uses VirtualMachineViewer.exe

mlmich — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 21:46:00 GMT

The VMM Administrator Console's VirtualMachineViewer.exe and the VMM Self-Service Portal (SSP) both use a same codebase for connecting to Hyper-V virtual machines. With the enhancements made to Win2k8 and VistaSP1, we are able to leverage MSTSCAX to connect to virtual machines through the host. What this means is that instead of directly connecting to the Virtual Machine using RDP, we instead RDP to the host and specify the VM to connect to. This allows VMM to connect to virtual machines with no network connectivity and to be able to view the virtual machine while booting (both of these features would not have been possible with regular RDP). One caveat of this implementation is that if you don't have the Integration Services installed inside of the guest operating system, then mouse support is not enabled when you launch either VirtualMachineViewer or the SSP within a terminal services connection. Basically, trying to RDP inside an RDP connection makes the mouse not behave correctly, so we disabled mouse support for this scenario. VMConnect.exe from Hyper-V has the same limitation.

Because this is only possible with Vista SP1 and Win2k8, if neither of these operating systems are installed on the client machine (and in this case, a client machine is the machine either running the internet explorer in the SSP case, or the machine running the Administrator Console), then VMM tries to connect to the Virtual Machine using standard RDP. Connecting via regular RDP has a few requirements of its own as well.

-The Integration Services need to be installed in the virtual machine. When the integration services are installed, VMM is able to get the fully qualified computer/domain name of the operating system installed in the guest operating system. We use this computer name to connect to the VM via RDP.

-There has to be a network connection from the client machine to the Virtual Machine (meaning we need network connectivity as well as the RDP port being open in any firewalls)

For connecting to VMware virtual machines, we use their QuickMKS ActiveX control that is available from their web service. As always, for Virtual Server we use the VMRC protocol for connecting to the virtual machines.

Hyper-V RC1 and update for Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1

mlmich — Tue, 27 May 2008 18:53:00 GMT

Hyper-V RC1 is readily available. You can find more details here: http://blogs.technet.com/virtualization/archive/2008/05/20/hyper-v-rc1-release-available-on-microsoft-download-center.aspx. The link to the Microsoft Download Center is http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=3ed582f0-f844-40ba-b692-230845af1149&displaylang=en.

Virtual Server has also been updated and Win2k8 is now qualified as a quest and a host operating system. For more details, see http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=a79bcf9b-59f7-480b-a4b8-fb56f42e3348&displaylang=en.

This update for Microsoft Virtual Server R2 SP1 includes support for the following additional Host and Guest Operating Systems

Additonal Guest Operating System support:
Windows Vista® Ultimate Edition with Service Pack 1 (SP1)
Windows Vista® Business Edition with Service Pack 1 (SP1)
Windows Vista® Enterprise Edition with Service Pack 1 (SP1)
Windows Server® 2008 Core
Windows Server® 2008 Standard
Windows Server® 2008 Datacenter
Windows Server® 2008 Enterprise
Windows Server® 2008 Small Business Server
Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 3

Additional Host Operating System support:
Windows Vista® Ultimate Edition with Service Pack 1 (SP1) (non-production use only)
Windows Vista® Business Edition with Service Pack 1 (SP1) (non-production use only)
Windows Vista® Enterprise Edition with Service Pack 1 (SP1)(non-production use only)
Windows Server® 2008 Core
Windows Server® 2008 Standard
Windows Server® 2008 Datacenter
Windows Server® 2008 Enterprise
Windows Server® 2008 Small Business Server
Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 3 (non-production use only)

What are the different ways virtual machines can be migrated using VMM 2008

mlmich — Tue, 06 May 2008 04:03:00 GMT

A post on the VMM newsgroup today prompted me to explain the different ways that VMs can be migrated when using VMM 2008.

From a VMM perspective, we have a few ways that we allow you to move a VM from one host to another. I listed them below in no particular order:

-Using Hyper-V and Windows Clustering, we offer what we call "quick migration". This method takes very little time to move a VM from one host to another. This time is proportional to the amount of time required to save the VM state and restore it. Clustering and the Hyper-V cluster resources take care of the rest.

-Using our network migration, we perform a network copy of the data as we move the VM from one host to another. The bulk of the time here is spend on the network copy operation. This is the slowest method of virtual machine migration that VMM offers.

-Using our SAN migration, we allow you to move a VM from one host to another via SAN. For this method, we employ a variety of techniques depending on your storage infrastructure. We can utilitze NPIV (In this case, we migrate a VM from host to host via delete and create vport), iSCSI (in this case, we migrate a VM from host to host via login and logout) or FC (In this case, we migrate a VM from host to host via Storage Array based LUN Masking, utilizing VDS).

-For VMware VMs, we can also utilitize VMotion.

Because of the fact that we move LUNs from one machine to another, we require that for any of the above methods (except VMotion) you need to allocate one VM per LUN. Otherwise we can only migrate a VM via the network migration method.

getting the computer name of a virtual machine

mlmich — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 00:35:00 GMT

A lot of people have asked me how they can get the actual computer name or FQDN of a virtual machine from from the host system. (FYI, this method does not allow you to get the IP address from within the VM - to do that, you would need to use your DNS infrastructure to correlate the MAC address of the VM and get its IP addresses.)

The answer is pretty simple.

If you are using VMM, you can use a simple PowerShell command:

get-vmmserver localhost | get-vm "vmname" | select Name, ComputerName, HostName | format-list

To ensure this works, you would need to ensure your VM is running and that you already installed the VM Additions inside the VM (if this is Virtual Server R2 Sp1), or have installed the Integration Services if this is Hyper-V. VMM 2008 will make it easy to install both via a simple action in our Administrator Console.

If you are using Virtual Server 2005 R2 Sp1+ and the COM API, a new interface was added to support this functionality. The new interface is called IVMGuestOS2 (http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb427400(VS.85).aspx) and it has a ComputerName property. This property will give you the FQDN name of the OS inside the Virtual Machine provided that the latest version of the VM Additions are installed.
If you are using Hyper-V and the WMI namespace, this can be achieved in a couple of different ways.

1) If you just want the Operating system name, you can get that via the GuestOperatingSystem property of the Msvm_SummaryInformation class (http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc136898(VS.85).aspx)

2) If you want the OS name and the computer name (FQDN), you can use the GuestIntrinsicExchangeItems property of the Msvm_KvpExchangeComponent class to get this. GuestIntrinsicExchangeItems returns an array of embedded Msvm_KvpExchangeDataItem instances which contain the set of key-value pairs that the guest operating system has pushed up to be available for access by external clients. Again the Intergration Components need to be up to date within the Virtual Machine.

Below is a sample script to illustrate how to do this.

Option Explicit

Dim WMIService
Dim KvpComponents
Dim VMList
Dim VM
Dim item
Dim component

'Get instance of 'virtualization' WMI service on the local computer
Set WMIService = GetObject("winmgmts:\\.\root\virtualization")

'Get all the MSVM_ComputerSystem object
Set VMList = WMIService.ExecQuery("SELECT * FROM Msvm_ComputerSystem")
For Each VM In VMList
if VM.Caption = "Virtual Machine" then
  WScript.Echo "========================================"
  WScript.Echo "VM Name: " & VM.ElementName
  WScript.Echo "VM GUID: " & VM.Name
  WScript.Echo "VM State: " & VM.EnabledState
end if
Next

' Get the list of KvpComponents
Set KvpComponents = WMIService.ExecQuery("SELECT * FROM Msvm_KvpExchangeComponent") '.ItemIndex(0)

For Each component in KvpComponents

' ensure that we are displaying the correct settings for the VM based on its instance ID/Name (you would need to replace the ID with the right one below)
If component.SystemName = "AAAAAAAA-AAAA-AAAA-AAAA-AAAAAAAAAAAA" then

  Dim GuestItems
  GuestItems = component.GuestIntrinsicExchangeItems

  ' Now enumerate the Msvm_KvpExchangeDataItem's that are in XML format
  For Each item In GuestItems
   WScript.Echo "========================================"
   ' if you wanted the FullyQualifiedDomainName or OSName for the VM, you need to parse the XML
   ' returned and you can get that value
   Wscript.Echo item
  Next
End If
Next