Hello! This morning, I logged into my Hyper-V/SCVMM 2008 server to deploy a new Windows Server 2008 to my Hyper-V server and as soon as I launched SCVMM 2008 console and I kept getting the following error message;

Upon clicking the OK button, the error message popped up again and again. Hm…

I opened Hyper-V management console. No Errors!

Tried to connect to a VM and VMConnect (Virtual Machine’s console) Window gave me the same error code. (0x8009030e)

Looking at the err.exe tool the error translates to;

C:\>err.exe 0x8009030e

SEC_E_NO_CREDENTIALS                        winerror.h
# No credentials are available in the security package

Searching for the same Error and Hyper-V on bing.com I got couple of hits on social.technet.microsoft.com that were pointing to unchecking the check box for “Use default credentials automatically (no prompt)” in Hyper-V Settings… 

I unchecked the check box mentioned above and hyper-v started prompting for credentials every time I was trying to connect to a Virtual Machine’s console.

Starting the SCVMM 2008 console pops up the user credential’s window. Not very fun to keep getting prompted for your credentials, right?

Did some more digging to see what’s exactly causing this;

since 0x8009030e is pointing to certificate authentication in other scenarios of getting this error code, I believe Hyper-V is using a certificate to authenticate instead of NTLM or my Kerberos ticket.

Well, If you’ve ever logged on remotely to a Windows Server 2008 on a network that requires Smart Card Certificate in addition to your credentials, you know that if you don’t provide your credentials in few seconds, Windows Server 2008 will read and use your certificate on the smart card to log you on. Smart, isn’t it?

To make the story short, I found out that I was logged on to my server using the smart card certificate instead of my normal credentials. Logged out and logged back in by providing my domain username/password and everything looks good!

If you see this issue, you’ll need to log out, log back in with your domain credentials and you won’t see the error anymore. Disconnecting from your Remote Desktop Session and reconnecting back by providing your domain username and password won’t fix the issue since you’ve already logged on with your smart card certificate and just reconnecting to that existing session. You’ll need a logoff and then a brand new session to fix this problem. Hope this helps solve this puzzle for you too! So long…

I’m sure the subject of extending volumes and drives due to lack of space or other reasons is still a good subject for IT Professionals who work with Windows Servers or Clients.

There are public documents such as KB325590 or the following TechNet articles that talk about how to extend the volume on your Windows Server 2003 or Windows XP Client;

Extend a simple or spanned volume

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc776741.aspx

The pain was when you wanted to extend the system/boot drive. In order to do that on Windows Server 2003 or Windows XP, you have to boot off of Windows PE and use diskpart. (Instructions in this KB325590)

Now with Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 extending the system/boot partition is as easy as what it used to be with non-system partitions.

Here are the steps;

1- Start Disk Management Console: (diskmgmt.msc);

** As you can see we have 1.00GB unallocated space on Disk0 and would like to add that to the C: drive

2- Right click on the C: partition and select Extend Volume…

3- Press Next on the Extend Volumes Wizard page;

4- You’ll be able to see the Total Volume Size, Maximum available space for extension and the amount of space you’d like to extend the system drive all in megabytes. By default the wizard will select the maximum amount that drive C: can be extended but you have the option to change that number; (please note: the number is in megabytes). Press Next after you are ready to extend the partition;

5- Confirm this action by pressing Finish button;

6- As you can see in the screen shot below, the system drive has been extended with no need to reboot or taking the system offline.

Amazing, isn’t it?

I’m a Microsoft Data Center Specialist with Microsoft US State and Local Government (SLG) team. My goal is to address challenging issues within SLG customer datacenters and their journey toward Private and Public Cloud adoption. Assisting customers to get a deeper understanding of managed and consolidated datacenters powered by Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V, Remote Desktop, VDI and System Center 2012 Suit, along with Microsoft Identity Management Solutions (FIM, UAG, TMG) is my main area of focus. My customers also appreciate partnership between my team and many Microsoft Hardware, Software and Services partners to deliver a smooth and rich engagements during different phases of their IT enablement projects.

Before this role, I was a Microsoft Sr. Premier Filed Engineer (PFE) and Sr. Support Escalation Engineer for few years. During that time I’d assisted many Microsoft enterprise customers with their proactive and reactive matter within their mission critical environments.

I’ve seen the question of how big the page file has to be on a serer several times. As you may know the rule of thumb is to make it 1.5 times the physical RAM.  But sometime system would have a different recommended value for your page file size.

What if you would like to make sure that you are sure about the page file size and you want to prove it with numbers and you calculator?

The best method to determine the correct page file size is to use the following performance counters in perfmon;

   commit limit

   commit charge

(available both in perfmon and task manager )

Commit limit includes memory and page file, so we can easily see how much page file is needed by observing these counters over time.  

Under full application load you need to increase the page file until the commit limit is 20%-30% greater than the commit, (or reduce it if your minimum page file size was higher).  

Since the correct measurements are based on application mix and number of other factors, you can see why the 1.5xRAM rule is just an estimate since we do not have an idea what we are running on the server.

We also have an article that shows you a different method on Windows Server 2003 x64;

889654  How to determine the appropriate page file size for 64-bit versions of Windows Server 2003 or Windows XP

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/889654

Either method should assist you with calculating the correct page file size on your server.

Until next time.  Cheers!

Just found Mark russinovich has a very deep dive about this topic on his Blog;

http://blogs.technet.com/markrussinovich/archive/2008/11/17/3155406.aspx

Hi, today I’d like to write about Hyper-V and Virtual Disks.

As you know Windows Server 2008 R2’s been released with bunch of enhancements in Hyper-V. One of the improvements is performance increase with Dynamic Expanding virtual hard disks (VHD).

Previously on Windows Server 2008 we didn’t recommend using dynamic expanding VHDs in production as its performance wasn’t quite comparable with fixed size VHDs. 

Now that Hyper-V product group has done such an awesome job of making dynamic VHDs par to fixed size VHDs, we get this question of whether these dynamic VHDs can be used in production or not?

Both virtual disk types are now supported in production. You may use either virtual hard disks based on your environment.

If you are trying to save space you need to use Dynamic Expanding virtual disks (VHD).

You can always expand the maximum size of Dynamic and Fixed VHDs (Using Edit Disk option in Hyper-V management Console or PowerShell script) if you need to.

The only important note here is to be careful about not oversubscribing the LUNs. This must be monitored closely if dynamic VHDs are being expanded frequently. 

What’s New in Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V?

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008/en/us/hyperv-r2.aspx

Also, please take time to review the following whitepaper;

Microsoft Hyper-V vs. VMware ESX & vSphere Operations & Management Cost Analysis White paper

http://download.microsoft.com/download/1/F/8/1F8BD4EF-31CC-4059-9A65-4A51B3B4BC98/Hyper-V-vs-VMware-ESX-and-vShpere-WP.pdf

So long!