Virtual Machine Management : troubleshooting

Issues when trying to add a single-node cluster under management in VMM

mlmich — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 19:33:00 GMT

A few folks have been experiencing errors and long delays in adding a single-node (i.e. a 1 node cluster) cluster under management in Virtual Machine Manager. This issue stems from the fact that VMM has an overcommitted property for each cluster. By default,...(read more)

How to get data (like the integration services version) from Msvm_KvpExchangeDataItem in Hyper-V

mlmich — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 21:12:00 GMT

Today, if you are using VMM, you can quickly and easily find out if your VM has the integration components installed by using this simple PowerShell script. << PS D:\Windows\system32> get-vm | select name, hostname, hasvmadditions, vmaddition...(read more)

Using the VMM Self Service Portal from a Win7 computer

mlmich — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 01:49:00 GMT

We have seen a lot of cases of customers trying to view the Virtual Machine Manager Self-Service Portal (SSP) UI from a computer running Windows Server 2008 R2 or Windows 7. If the portal is running VMM 2008, it is likely that you can't view the connections...(read more)

Issues with adding a host to VMM when the computer has more than 16 processors

mlmich — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 19:58:00 GMT

It has come to our attention that trying to add a computer with more than 16 processors (for example a quad six-core machine with 24 processors) is crashing the VMM server with the following exception:

System.InvalidOperationException: Nullable object must have a value.

at System.Nullable`1.get_Value()

at Microsoft.VirtualManager.Engine.Adhc.WindowsHostDataProperties.GetProcessorData()

at Microsoft.VirtualManager.Engine.Adhc.WindowsHostDataProperties.PopulateProperties()

From a Hyper-V perspective we support up to 24 cores (requires a QFE http://blogs.msdn.com/taylorb/archive/2008/09/23/24-core-support-for-hyper-v-hosts.aspx). We have a few workarounds for VMM to work in this case (either do #1 or implement #2 and #3):

You can limit the number of CPUs via msconfig to 16 (we know this solution is not ideal in this case, but wanted to document it anyway)
Go to BIOS, then navigate to Advanced Setup>Clustering Mode and set it to Physical (default is Logical)
Use Bcdedit to add USEPHYSICALDESTINATION and set to YES. This forces the physical APIC to be used.

cheers.

How to enable server-optimized garbage collector for VMM

mlmich — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 19:38:00 GMT

If your VMM implementation has over 150 hosts, we strongly recommended that you enable server-optimized garbage collector (GC) on the VMM server instead of the default workstation garbage collector. This can significantly reduce the CPU utilization on the VMM server and improve your performance for parallel VMM operations.

To accomplish this, simply create a new filed named vmmservice.exe.config and place this file in the same location as vmmservice.exe (VMMservice.exe is located in the bin directory of the VMM server role installation)

This file should have in it the following information (bold and indented). If you want to know more about this option, read this link: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=102219

<configuration
   <runtime>
      <gcServer enabled="true"/>
   </runtime>
</configuration>

Azman permissions for VMM-managed Hyper-V hosts

mlmich — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 21:18:00 GMT

When VMM starts managing a hyper-v host, it takes full control of the Azman XML file that contains the permissions for Hyper-V. In fact, VMM will create a new copy of the file in a separate directory location and point hyper-v to that file (the file name is HyperVAuthStore.xml and is located inside the installation folder of VMM).

This, however, has some implications to 3rd party software that also want to have privileges to execute WMI calls against Hyper-V (if, however, this 3rd party software runs as local system or as a local administrator then everything works fine :) ). When VMM creates this new file, the only permissions listed are the ones VMM knows about and are as follows:

VMM Administrators are given full access to the VM/Hyper-V, including console access to the VM
VMM Delegated administrators have no access to the VM or Hyper-V
End User Role members are given console access to the VM if their User Roles has this privilege defined

This means that any privileges defined in the old Azman file will be lost once VMM takes control of the host. Every 30 minutes, VMM will also run a refresher that will update this file and ensure that the only privileges to VMs are the ones that VMM knows about. However, if any 3rd party software makes any changes to role definitions or role memberships in the root scope of the file, VMM will preserve them. So if you want to integrate with a VMM managed Hyper-V host, you can make your changes as listed above after VMM takes control of the host and VMM will preserve them.

In the next release of VMM, we are making a few changes in this area. Instead of ignoring all changes from the AZMAN XML file when we add a host in VMM, we will instead import any role definitions and role memberships from the root scope of the existing XML file (initialstore.xml) and add them to HyperVAuthStore.xml's root scope. No other scopes will be preserved.

When you remove a hyper-v host from management, in VMM 2008 we will revert the pointer from HyperVAuthStore.xml to initialstore.xml (or whatever the previous azman store was for hyper-v). This means that any changes made to HyperVAuthStore.xml while this host was under management in VMM are lost. You will need to ensure that the proper privileges are applied after the fact.

In the next release of VMM, we will solve this problem as well, making sure that any changes made to the root scope of HyperVAuthStore.xml are preserved during the removal of a host from management. The root scope changes are the only privileges that will be left behind for Hyper-V.

To find our the current Azman file that Hyper-V uses, you can query this registry key on the Hyper-V host: HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Virtualization\StoreLocation

Getting an error when trying to connect to a VM using the Virtual Machine Connection tool

mlmich — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 02:59:00 GMT

If you are trying to connect to a Virtual Machine using VMConnect.exe (a Hyper-V tool), you might get an error that says "An error occured when trying to register for IME events for ....." and it indicates that an Access Denied has occured. If this happens, it is possible that the cause is DCOM configuration. Open DCOMCNFG, click on my computer, properties, COM security, click on Access Permissions limits, and make sure that Anonymous Logon has Remote Access enabled.

Getting an incorrect SAN migration option during clone-vm in VMM

mlmich — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 20:20:00 GMT

If you have a Failover Cluster managed by VMM 2008, it is possible that you will get a placement page similar to the one below if you try to clone a Highly Available Virtual Machine that is part of the cluster. The placement page in the new-vm wizard below incorrectly states that the transfer type will be SAN. New Virtual Machines are always transfered (or created) over the LAN because we need to copy the binaries over to the target location for the VM. That copy is always done using BITS.

You can go ahead and ignore this transfer type and select the Host that best matches your needs for this Virtual Machine and complete the wizard. Our team is investigating a fix for this :)

Highly Available Virtual Networks and VMM

mlmich — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 03:46:00 GMT

We had a few customers ask us to clarify high availability (HA) with regards to Virtual Networks (VN).

In the VMM/Clustering case, there are a few considerations around virtual networks:

A VN to be considered HA has to have the same exact name in all nodes of the cluster (Virtual Network names are case-sensitive), the same location (the NICs to which the VN is attached to in each cluster node have the same location) and the same VN network tag
An HA VM in a cluster connected to a VN not marked as HA, would be marked as ‘Unsupported cluster configuration’ in VMM. Make sure the VN is HA in order to make the VM healthy again.

If you fail to properly configure your virtual networks in a cluster, a highly available VM might lose network connectivity upon failover to another cluster node.

How to upgrade between the different SKUs of VMM 2008

mlmich — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 07:01:00 GMT

Now that VMM 2008 has RTM'ed, a lot of folks are asking what are the upgrade paths between the various SKUs of VMM. I wanted to list two upgrade paths here and the associated process around this.

Upgrade Paths supported by this method when the build number of VMM is the same:

VMM 2008 Evaluation Edition --> VMM 2008 Retail Edition
VMM 2008 Workgroup Edition --> VMM 2008 Retail Edition

Steps to follow:

1. Install VMM RTM Server EVAL or WORKGROUP
2. Uninstall VMM RTM Server EVAL/WORKGROUP with Retain Data
3. Install the VMM Full Version (Select or Retail SKU) while using the Retained data from the step above.
4. After installation, connect using the Administrator Console
5. Wait for the Library Refresher to run or right-click on the library server and select Refresh
6. Go to Managed Computers View and right-click on all the hosts/library servers. Execute the Reassociate action for servers that are in the “Access Denied” state. Hosts and Library Servers should be usable again at this step.

Did you encounter an issue with VMM 2008 beta when you upgraded to Hyper-V RC1

mlmich — Thu, 22 May 2008 21:29:00 GMT

A lot of you have been experiencing issues when you upgrade Hyper-V to RC1. I would like to reiterate that the VMM team knows about this and we apologize for the inconvenience. See this thread on technet forums for more details. http://forums.microsoft.com/TechNet/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=3373834&SiteID=17

Hyper-V telling you that integration services are installed on Win2k8 VMs but mouse is still not working?

mlmich — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 20:25:00 GMT

This probably means that you need to upgrade to RC0 Integration Services for Hyper-V. This is KB949219 which is publicly available from the Microsoft download center. This needs to applied inside Win2k8 VMs, since integration services shipped with the core operating system and they need to be upgraded. Since Win2k8 shipped with integration services, you are gettting the error that "integration services are already installed" when you try to deploy them from VMConnect.exe.

This is the same upgrade package that you can use to upgrade your Hyper-V Win2k8 server. The same update can be used for patching your Win2k8 guest virtual machines, but you have to patch them from inside the VM.

You can update these in a couple of ways:

-You can attach a legacy network adapter to the VM and go to Microsoft download center and download + install the update

-you can download the update and "bake" it into an ISO and attach the ISO to the VM. FYI, the same process applies to both 32bit and 64bit Virtual Machines.

A note of caution:

-Since Hyper-V initially thinks you have the integration services but they are not the right version, when you are trying to connect to a VM over RDP, your mouse might be captured. Ctrl-Alt-Left will not work in this case in terms of releasing the mouse. Instead, press Ctrl-Alt-End to release it.

dealing with VMM error 2917 : "The network path was not found"

mlmich — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 10:23:00 GMT

This error is one of the most difficult to diagnose errors in a customer environment. If you are hitting this issue when trying to install the VMM server component, here are a few things to try out.

-First, run "gpupdate /force" on your VMM server and reboot and try this again
-If that does not work, can you remove the machine from the domain, reboot, and join again. Then try installing VMM again.

If the above do not work and you are still getting the same error, try the steps from the VMM troubleshooting guide for this error message. (highlight the table below to see the message if it does not display correctly in your screen)

VMM server setup fails with error 2917: "The network path <file name> was not found on the <server name> server."

Or WinRM error: "The network path was not found."

1. The user name or password specified is not valid.

2. The credentials used to set up VMM do not belong to a domain with a two-way full trust with the domain of the VMM server.

3. There are issues with either the Kerberos tickets or the Service Principal Name (SPN) for the computer.

For causes 1 and 2, log in with credentials on the same domain as the VMM server, or with credentials on a domain that has a full two-way trust with the domain of the VMM server, and then try setup again.

For cause 3, purge the Kerberos tickets using kerbtray.exe, available at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=93709. Then reset the SPN for the VMM server using setspn.exe with local system credentials. Setspn.exe is available from http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=93710. To start a local system process, use at.exe. For example:

Copy Code

At.exe <time in the future, such as 10:26> /interactive cmd.exe

If this does not work, make the computer a member of a workgroup instead of a domain, restart the computer, and then join the computer to the domain again.

If nothing so far works, and if the machine you are trying to install VMM is also a domain controller, try the following:

-First, create a new domain admin account and name it VMMAdmin.

-Now, log in into the VMM server using that account and try to install VMM.

good luck - if everything fails up to here, try posting your specific issue to the VMM Forums or open a case with Microsoft Product Support (CSS or PSS)