Windows Server blog by Kurt Roggen [BE]

“Covering every aspect of Windows Server 2008 R2 in nine chapters and approximately 200 pages is clearly an impossible task.
Rather than try to cover everything, we’ve focused on what is new and important, while giving you the context from Windows Server 2008.”

This free MS Press ebook covers Remote Desktop Services (RDS), VDI, Hyper-V 2.0, IIS 7.5, Branch Cache, Direct Access, Active Directory Domain Services (ADDS), DFS-R, Bitlocker-To-Go, etc…

Download here

A while ago, I wrote about the free P2V tool Disk2VHD from Sysinternals.  Now, an update is available that provides command line support.

Disk2vhd includes command-line options that enable you to script the creation of VHDs. Specify the volumes you want included in a snapshot by drive letter (e.g. c:) or use "*" to include all volumes.

Usage: disk2vhd <[drive: [drive:]...]|*> <vhdfile>
Example: disk2vhd * c:\vhd\snapshot.vhd

Download here

StarWind iSCSI SAN software is a storage virtualization software which turns any standard 64-bit or 32-bit Windows Server into a fail-safe SAN that uses an existing Ethernet network.  StarWind Enterprise HA is a special High Availability edition which uses Synchronous Data Mirroring with Active-Active Automated Failover and Failback technology, allowing the storage to continue operating properly in the event of a failure. This technology permits you to configure an Active-Active 2 Node storage cluster which ensures a highly reliable and fault tolerant storage.

So for building those Hyper-V clusters, Starwind certainly brings added value to the scene, by providing storage high-availability over iSCSI.

Enterprise-class features of StarWind HA include:

• Synchronous Data Mirroring: real-time data mirroring to another storage server
• High Availability / Automated Failover: fault tolerant technology eliminates single point of failure
• Failback with Fast Synchronization: failback to an original system after an automated failover
• Remote / Asynchronous Replication: replicates your storage remotely across a WAN
• CDP & Snapshots: captures point-in-time snapshots with unlimited rollback points
• Thin Provisioning: allocates space dynamically for highly efficient disk utilization
• Server Clustering: provides shared storage for High Availability server clustering
• Advanced High Speed Caching: advanced caching to accelerate I/O performance

For more information:

• Starwind 5.0 Preview
• StarWind Enterprise HA - High Availability SAN

Microsoft released an KB article Q957256 describing methods that you can use to (in-place) upgrade Hyper-V to Windows Server 2008 R2 from a Windows Server 2008 installation that has the Hyper-V role enabled.

During the in-place upgrade of the parent partition from Windows Server 2008 to Windows Server 2008 R2, the compatibility report will inform you that you must remove the Hyper-V role by using Server Manager before you continue with the upgrade. This is not necessary (as per KB957256).

Known incompatibilities

• VM Saved State
• VM Live/Online Snapshots (taken when VM was running, also using Saved State for memory content) – However, Offline snapshot are fully compatible (taken when VM was not running) with Hyper-V R2.
• Upgrade VMs to latest Hyper-V R2 Integration Components once upgraded to Hyper-V R2. The synthetic devices (storage, networking, video and input devices) will continue to function until you upgrade the VM to the latest IC.  Improvements (such as: hot add/removal) made in the Hyper-V R2 Integration Components will not be available until the IC are updated.

For more detailed information: KB957256

Preparing for Upgrade

Ignoring above recommendations, results in issues with

1. Saved states
If you keep a VM in saved state through the upgrade/export to a Windows Server 2008 R2 host, the VM will be registered and will appear to be in the saved state. However, the VM will not be able to restore from the saved state. You will need to discard the saved state (Delete saved state) and then cold start the virtual machine.

2. Online Snapshots
You will be able to apply the snapshot and thus get the configuration and storage data associated with that snapshot. However, you will not be able to restore from the associated saved state. You will need to discard the saved state (Delete saved state) and restart the VM.

Upgrading Hyper-V Clusters

The KB article also deals with “Upgrade guidance for virtual machines on failover clusters”, which actually implies a rebuild of the cluster to Windows Server 2008 R2 with Hyper-V.

For more detailed information: KB957256

Migrating using VMM 2008 R2

When moving/migrating VMs from a Hyper-V v1 host to a Hyper-V v2 (R2) host using VMM 2008 R2, all the above incompatibilities are taken into account and the new Windows Server 2008 R2 Integration Components/Services are installed seamlessly onto the newly migrated virtual machines as part of the migration process.

Sysinternals offers a free P2V tool called Disk2vhd that creates VHDs (Virtual Hard Disks) of physical disks for use in Microsoft Virtual PC and/or Hyper-V virtual machines (VMs).  You can run Disk2vhd on a system that’s online, since it uses Windows Volume Snapshot (VSS) capability, to create consistent point-in-time snapshots of the volumes you want to include.

To use VHDs produced by Disk2vhd, create a VM with the desired characteristics and add the VHDs to the VM configuration as IDE disk(s).
On first boot, a VM booting a captured copy of Windows will detect the VM’s hardware and automatically install drivers, if present in the image. If the required drivers are not present, install them via the Virtual PC or Hyper-V integration components.

You can also attach to VHDs using the Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2 Disk Management or Diskpart utilities.

Download here

For more information: Sysinternals website

If you’re dealing with Hyper-V virtualisation, have a look the this blog post from Microsoft Support Services on the top issues and resolutions with Hyper-V in Windows Server 2008.  The issues are categorized below with the top issue(s) in each category, listed with (possible) resolutions and additional comments as needed.

• Deployment\Planning
• Installation Issues
• Virtual Devices or Drivers
• Snapshots
• Integration Components
• Virtual machine State and Settings
• High Availability (Failover Clustering)
• Backup (Hyper-V VSS Writer)
• Virtual Network Manager
• Hyper-V Management Console

Have a look at the Ask the Core Team blog