Under load, the default buffer size used the by the virtual switch may provide inadequate buffer and result in packet loss. We recommend increasing the VM bus receive buffer from 1Mb to 2Mb.
Read full article here.
In development environments or when debugging a customer issue, it is usually a pain to get a crash dump of an existing VM state.
Anton Naumovich from Hyper-V team recently released a tool which can convert a VM saved state to a full memory dump file. This tool enables easier debugging of issues in the VMs and provides the fastest way to generate a memory dump file from a VM. It comes as a single executable and with a single command; any saved VM or online snapshot can be converted into a full memory dump file.
I have shown this at presentations several times now; Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 operating from UFD. People often asked for a copy of the drive or a how-to-guide to make this work.
Although totally unsupported, you can now configure a UFD with Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 yourself. See here for full details.
If you don’t want to go through all manual steps to make this work, you can get a tool which does it all for you. You can find that tool here.
Designing your virtualization host requires a lot of information; how many VM’s will it host, what are the requirements of each VM, what to reserve for the host, how much resources to include for future needs, etc. At least you need information on the VM requirements meaning you need details like memory and processor usage, network and disk I/O. Those can be obtained by using MAP and exported to Excel for detailed analysis.
Once that information is available, you can sort things out and design the host from the cumulative requirements (still incorporating necessary host reserves and future expansion).
Many developments in hardware assist in Server Virtualization; hardware assisted virtualization in the processor architecture (Intel-VT, AMD-V), Data Execution Prevention (actually a security measure) which are all requirements for running Hyper-V. But how about Second Level Address Translation (Intel: Extended Page Tables, AMD: Nested Page Tables)? Those address translation technologies may be very important when virtualizing memory intensive workloads. Maybe even more important, how about Virtual Machine Queues or Virtual Machine Direct Connect? The more general term is Intel-VT for Connectivity, Intel VT-c. You can read about Intel VT-c here.
All Virtual Machines require networking and often contain more than one network adapter. Network I/O is one of those things that may become a serious load on the virtualization host because it handles all network I/O in memory and taxes the processor.
When designing the host, there is much more to consider than memory and the number of sockets and cores and basic storage and network connectivity. IDC published a white paper called “Optimizing Hardware for x86 Server Virtualization” (sponsored by Intel). It gives a great overview of what comprises a server virtualization host. Very much worth reading for those who design server virtualization hosts. You will then conclude that a server virtualization host is not your ordinary file and print server with a lot of memory and processor cores.
The Solution Accelerators Team is offering customers and partners added inventory and assessment capabilities with the Microsoft Assessment and Planning (MAP) Toolkit 5.0 Community Technical Preview (CTP). The MAP Toolkit 5.0 CTP provides customers and partners with new features such as inventory of heterogeneous server environments; the ability to determine usage of deployed System Center Configuration Manager (a member of the Core Client Access License Suite); and readiness assessment for migration to Office 2010. Over 800,000 Microsoft customers and partners including Costco Wholesale Corporation, Continental Airlines, and Pella Corporation have already downloaded and used this toolkit to help plan for their server and client deployments.
Toolkit Features— What’s New with version 5.0 CTP?
The Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit 5.0 CTP includes the following new features:
• Heterogeneous Server Environment Inventory for Technologies including Windows Server, Linux, UNIX and VMware.
• Ability to determine usage of deployed System Center Configuration Manager, a member of the Core Client Access License Suite.
• Office 2010 Readiness Assessment.
Additional Features
• Windows 7 Hardware and Device Compatibility Assessment.
• Windows Server 2008 R2 Hardware and Device Compatibility Assessment.
• Virtualization Candidates Assessment for Hyper-V Server Consolidation.
• Inventory of VMware Server Hosts and Guests.
• User Interface and Proposal Customization for Partner co-branding.
• Enhanced Usability and Improved Inventory Performance.
• SQL Server Instance Discovery.
• Desktop Security Assessment for Anti-virus and Anti-malware Programs Installation.
• Forefront Client Security/NAP Readiness Assessment.
Benefits to Customers and Partners
Saves Planning or Pre-Sales Time. A detailed network inventory and assessment of servers and desktops often takes days of manual labor. With Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit, you can now conduct an environment inventory of up to 100,000 computers in a matter of hours instead of days, giving you extra time to focus on critical planning or pre-sales tasks and information necessary to make the business case for client, server, and virtualization projects.
Provides Actionable Recommendations and Reporting. The MAP Toolkit provides valuable inventory and readiness assessment reports with environment-specific reports, making it easier for IT migration and deployment projects to get off the ground and running.
Covers Wide Range of Scenarios—from Desktops to Servers. The MAP Toolkit offers technology assessments and planning recommendations for many Microsoft desktop and server products including Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2, Hyper-V R2, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, Hyper-V, Virtual Server 2005 R2, 2007 Microsoft Office, SQL Server 2008, Forefront Client Security, Network Access Protection, and more.
MAP 5.0 CTP is available on Connect.
Talking about cool utilities, Mark and Bruce have created a disk capturing tool which will create a VHD from the capture.
Do you have a running machine you would like to put into a VM? This tool may just be enough.
Check it out here.
This is nothing more than a link to a great post from Mike Neil on our progress with Redhat. There is now cooperative support from both companies when running select applications on either virtualization product, being Hyper-V or KVM.
Also a very important piece of the post is the fact that the Microsoft contribution of the Integration Components source code has made it to the Linux kernel tree. This means any Linux distribution can compile these and leverage the components for optimal performance running on Hyper-V!
When configuring a Virtual Desktop Infrastructure using Remote Desktop Services in Windows Server 2008 R2, you need the Remote Desktop Virtualization Host role service. Enabling that on a Windows Server 2008 R2 system with the Full UI is rather straightforward.
But I could not quickly find what to enable on Hyper-V Server. As we clearly state on the Hyper-V Server home page, Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 is ideally suited for VDI. But how can you enable the Remote Desktop Virtualization Host?
It turned out to be quite simple once you know what to look for (isn’t that common).
When you search for the available features on Hyper-V Server you can use DISM. For example “dism /online /Get-Features /Format:table”. This may give the following output:
Now I did not find the Remote Desktop Virtualization Host feature in this list :-). Through PowerShell however, I found out it to be the VmHostAgent feature.
I had the Server Manager cmdlets installed on the Hyper-V Server host. This gives a much more readable output of features. This is what I used in PowerShell:
Import-Module ServerManager
Get-WindowsFeature
Now you can see the Remote Desktop Virtualization Host feature with a Name of RDS-Virtualization.
Enabling the feature is now simple.
DISM
dism /online /Enable-Feature /FeatureName:VmHostAgent
! Make sure you type VmHostAgent with correct casing !
PowerShell
Add-WindowsFeature –Name RDS-Virtualization
When you choose option 8 in sconfig you may notice that sconfig lists fewer network adapters than there are actually physically available. It is also possible that sconfig shows no network adapters at all.
Although it may not be obvious, there is a simple reason behind this. Sconfig only shows ‘active network interfaces’ by running the following WMI query:
"SELECT * FROM Win32_NetworkAdapterConfiguration where IPenabled=TRUE"
This query returns active network adapters or more accurately network adapters with an IP configuration. When network adapters have no physical connection, neither APIPA, static IP or DHCP configured IP will exist and so sconfig shows no information for those adapters.
The solution to this, if you want to list the adapters or configure IP on any of them, is to use NetShell (netsh).
Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 fully supports clustering. With the addition of enterprise features it has become the ideal virtualization host amongst all Microsoft platform offerings; Windows Server 2008 R2 (Standard, Enterprise, Datacenter), Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2.
A virtualization host supports a maximum of 384 VM’s. However this is not the case when the host is a cluster node. When using clusters, we support a maximum of 64 VM’s per cluster node. So stretching that to a cluster of 16 nodes, we support a maximum of 16 times 64 VM’s on the cluster. That is a total of 1024 VM’s in a cluster. From a clustering design point of view it makes more sense to have 1 or even two passive nodes (one for failure, one for maintenance).
This maximum is true for all virtualization hosts being either Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 or the Windows Server 2008 R2 editions.
This is not an announcement on the availability of the Hyper-V Resource Kit; it has been available for two months now.
But I finally got the time to read the whole book. I was one of the reviewers of the book but as a reviewer you don’t get all chapters for review.
If you want to know more about Hyper-V and better understand its features and functionality I highly recommend this book. Look here for an outline of the chapters.
Na Windows Server 2008 R2 en Windows 7 volgt nu ook de gratis server virtualisatie host in de R2 release.
Nieuw ten opzichte van de RC release is de boot-from-flash mogelijkheid die hardware-leveranciers kunnen gebruiken om een geïntegreerde server-virtualisatie host te bieden.
Zie verder hier voor alle details.
Yesterday, July 22nd, Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 were declared Released To Manufacturing (RTM).
You can read more about the Windows 7 announcement at the Windows7 blog here. And more about the Windows Server 2008 R2 announcement here.
Regarding the virtualization capabilities in Windows Server 2008 R2, the virtualization team has created a great outline here.
The RC2 release of the Linux IC’s for Hyper-V have been released. With this release, support for the following guest operating systems has been added:
· Red Hat Enterprise Linux (5.2, x86/x64)
· Red Hat Enterprise Linux (5.3, x86/x64)
· SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 (x86/x64)
Having support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux, one of the leaders in server-based Linux deployments, is significant. We’ve been working with Red Hat on the certification process to ensure support for Red Hat on Hyper-V.
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 is the latest version of the award-winning distribution, which includes advances in Green Computing and increased performance for interop with .NET applications.
The integration components support the following virtualization platforms:
· Windows Server® 2008 Standard, Enterprise, and Datacenter (x64 only)
· Microsoft® Hyper-V Server 2008
· Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V RC (Build 7100) Standard, Enterprise, and Datacenter (x64 only)
· Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 RC (Build 7100)
Having a single set of integration components supporting both releases of Hyper-V provides an easier administration and management experience for Hyper-V admins.
Customers can obtain the Linux IC’s via access to the Microsoft Connect program: https://connect.microsoft.com/SelfNomination.aspx?ProgramID=1863&pageType=1&SiteID=495
REDMOND, Wash., July 20, 2009 — Today, in a break from the ordinary, Microsoft released 20,000 lines of device driver code to the Linux community. The code, which includes three Linux device drivers, has been submitted to the Linux kernel community for inclusion in the Linux tree. The drivers will be available to the Linux community and customers alike, and will enhance the performance of the Linux operating system when virtualized on Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V or Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V.
…….
For the remainder use link below.
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2009/Jul09/07-20LinuxQA.mspx
