Hits: February 2010 - Posts - Windows Server 2008 (R2) blog by Kurt Roggen [BE]

February 2010 - Posts

“The Windows Server 2008 R2 licensing guide provides an in-depth overview of the Windows Server 2008 R2 core product offerings, including product names, available sales channels, licensing models, and number of running instances allowed per license in physical and virtual operating system environments (POSEs and VOSEs)”.

Download here

 

Licensing Microsoft Server Products in Virtual Environments white paper – December 2009 Update

“This white paper describes Microsoft licensing models for the server operating systems and server applications under virtual environments. It can help you understand how to use Microsoft server products with virtualization technologies, such as Microsoft Hyper-V technology, Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2, or third-party virtualization solutions that are provided by VMWare and Parallels.“

Download here

If you need assistance in any of these areas below, have a look at the Technet Hyper-V Library.

  • Planning
  • Installation
  • Deployment
  • Management
  • Virtual workloads
  • Security
  • Performance
  • High-Availability

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Just wanted to share with you same nice Hyper-V “gadgets” that make life more fun…

Tore Lervik created a sidebar gadget to see what the Hyper-V servers are doing from your workstation.
The gadget can list multiple servers at once and also support VMconnect when double clicking on a VM.

Some features:

  • Host
    • Title
    • Control (Shut Down, Start, WakeOnLAN)
    • RAM
  • VM
    • Title
    • Status
    • CPU graph
    • Control (Start, Turn Off, Shut Down and Save)
    • Connect (RDP, VMConnect)
  • Multilanguage support.

Download version 5.0 here at www.mindre.net

 

System Tray Icon

Jerry Orman created a Hyper-V Manager that sits in the system tray and allows you to Start, Stop, Save State, and Pause the VMs running on that box.
So when you right-click the tray icon, you get a list of the virtual machines on that host with the current state of the machine. 

Download here

For more information: Jerry Orman’s blog

Find documentation that you can download to help you deploy, operate and maintain System Center Virtual Machine Manager VMM 2008 R2.
You can also browse the product documentation online in the Technical Library

A VMM 2008 R2 rollup package that was released on February 9, 2010 resolving following issues:

  • Issue #1: Self Service Portal
  • Issue #2: Quick Migration/Live Migration after Quick Storage Migration
  • Issue #3: VMware duplicate custom named tags on VMs
  • Issue #4: Self-Service User role management

After installation a restart is required if the Virtual Machine Manager service or the Virtual Machine Manager Agent service is running when the rollup is installed on the Virtual Machine Manager server.

This update requires updating the VMM agent on the Hyper-V and Virtual Server hosts. The hosts will have a status of Needs Attention if the agent has not been updated.

To update the VMM agent on multiple hosts, follow these steps:

  1. Open the Virtual Machine Manager console.
  2. Click Administration, and then click Managed Computers.
  3. Select the hosts, and then click Update Agent.
  4. Enter your credentials, and then click OK.

The installation of the hotfix rollup package KB978560 brings VMM up to version 2.0.4273.0

Download here

Microsoft released the Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit 5.0 Community Technical Preview (CTP), designed to simplify and streamline IT infrastructure planning process across multiple scenarios through network-wide automated discovery and assessments, this tool provides a quick and complete inventory of current IT environment of any organization, hardware and device compatibility assessment, and actionable reporting of recommended hardware upgrades for migration.

MAP Toolkit 5.0 CTP includes:

  • Inventory of heterogeneous server environments including Windows Server, Linux, UNIX and VMware technologies
  • Ability to determine usage of deployed System Center Configuration Manager, a member of the Core Client Access License (Core CAL) Suite
  • Readiness assessment for migration or upgrade to Microsoft Office 2010.

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

Download here (registration required)

The new PowerShell cmdlets for Hyper-V (by James O’Neill) are implemented in the form of a PowerShell version 2 module which is distributed as a single zip file from http://PShyperV.codeplex.com.

A previous version was implemented for version 1 of PowerShell and remains available on CodePlex. The previous version will also work on PowerShell V2, but the new version will not work on PowerShell V1.
Both versions work with the original release of Hyper-V and the R2 release.

The library uses 31 different verbs and 69 different nouns (2139 possible combinations)

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To install the Hyper-V module, copy the contents of the “HyperV_Install” folder (inside the zip file) to a new folder “%systemdrive%\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\Modules\HyperV”

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To find the Hyper-V module, from PowerShell, type

Get-Module -List

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Notice the HyperV module is picked up automatically by PowerShell.

To import the Hyper-V module, from PowerShell, type

import-module HyperV

To find out which commands are available through the module, from PowerShell, type

get-command -module HyperV

To get help or more detailed information about a specific cmdlet, from PowerShell, type

get-help <cmdlets>

Some more examples:

Connecting to a VM
New-VMConnectSession

Discovering and manipulating Machine states
Get-VMState , Set-VMState , Convert-VmState, Ping-VM , Test-VMHeartBeat, Shutdown-VM , Start-VM, Stop-VM, Suspend-VM, Get-VMKVP, Add-KVP, Remove-KVP, Get-VMJPEG

Backing up, exporting and snapshotting VMs
Export-VM , Import-VM, Get-VMSnapshot, Choose-VMSnapshot , Apply-VMSnapshot , New-VMSnapshot ,Remove-VMSnapshot, Rename-VMSnapShot, Update-VMSnapshot, Get-VMSnapshotTree, Get-VmBackupScript

Adding and removing VMs, configuring motherboard settings.
New-VM , Remove-VM , Set-VM , Get-VMCPUCount, Set-VMCPUCount, Get-VMMemory, Set-VMMemory, Set-VMSerialPort

Manipulating Disk controllers, drives and disk images
Get-VMDiskController
Add-VMSCSIController , Remove-VMSCSIcontroller
Get-VMDriveByController , Add-VMDRIVE , Remove-VMdrive
Get-VMDiskByDrive, Add-VMDisk , Set-VMDisk, Get-VMDisk
Get-VMFloppyDisk , Add-VMFloppyDisk
Add-VMNewHardDisk

Manipluating Network Interface Cards
Get-VMNic , List-VMNic , Choose-VMNIC, Add-VMNIC, Remove-VMNIC , Set-VMNICAddress , Set-VMNICConnection , Get-VMNicport,
Get-VMNicSwitch, Choose-VMSwitch, New-VMSwitchPort, Get-VMByMACaddress, Choose-VMExternalEthernet,
New-VMExternalSwitch, New-VMInternalSwitch, New-VmPrivateSwitch

Working with VHD files
Get-VHDDefaultPath, Get-VHDInfo, New-VHD, Compact-VHD, Test-VHD,Convert-VHD,Merge-VHD,Mount-VHD, Unmount-VHD

 

Download Hyper-V R2 PS Library documentation here

Download Hyper-V R2 PS Library here

VMM provides PowerShell cmdlets that allow you to perform simple administrative tasks in an automated way or that you can use together with other cmdlets or command-line elements, to perform more complex tasks (eg: rapid provisioning).

Jobs are displayed for each action performed in VMM and can be viewed directly in the VMM administrator console. VMM provides a central place for monitoring actions taken in VMM with Jobs.
You have the ability to sort, filter and group jobs to easily find jobs that meet specific criteria.
Each failed job has troubleshooting tips to help you resolve failures. By integrating jobs with the VMM console, you have a single place to monitor your virtual environment.

VMM provides three ways to get information about jobs:

  • Jobs view
  • Jobs window (VMM toolbar)
  • Latest Job tab (on a host or VM)

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By default, VMM maintains the job history for the past 90 days in its SQL database (TaskTrail table) and cleans up using its internal Garbage Collection process.
The size of the VMM database is impacted by the number of jobs (daily) run and the number of days these jobs are kept.

To change the interval of the garbage collection process and to (automatically) purge the Job History in VMM 2008, add the “TaskGC” registry key to HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager Server\Settings\SQL.  The REG_DWORD value controls the number of days that events are stored in the SQL database.

Once you restart the VMM service jobs will be automatically be purged from the database.

By default, the garbage collection job runs every 20 hours and will read the TaskGC value to start the removal process of jobs above this limit.

NOTE: Microsoft recommends for VMM implementations over 150 hosts, 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 enable the server-optimized garbage collector on the VMM server, create a file that is named vmmservice.exe.config - using the content below - and then for VMM 2008, place it into the %SYSTEMDRIVE%\Program Files\Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008\Bin directory on the VMM server, or for VMM 2008 R2, place it into the %SYSTEMDRIVE%\Program Files\Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2\Bin directory on the VMM server.

Content of the vmmservice.config file
<configuration>
     <runtime>
           <gcServer enabled="true"/>
     </runtime>
</configuration>

 

Related reading:

The other day, I got asked which ports VMM 2008 (R2) uses/needs.
Well, here‘s a list of TCP/IP ports SCVMM needs to talk to various system components:

image

  • VMM Server
    • 80 (HTTP, WinRM) - Mgmt
    • 443 (HTTPS, BITS) - Data
    • 8100 (WCF Connections to PowerShell or VMM Administrator Console)
  • Library Server
    • 80 (HTTP, WS-MAN)
    • 443 (HTTPS, BITS)
  • VMM SQL Server
    • 1433 (Remote SQL instance connection)
    • 1434 (SQL browser service) - only needed for initial setup
  • VMM Self-Service Web Portal
    • 80 (HTTP) or 443 (HTTPS)
  • VM Host: Hyper-V or Virtual Server
    • 80 (HTTP, WS-MAN)
    • 443 (HTTPS, BITS)
    • 2179 (VMConnect on Hyper-V hosts for single-class console view)
    • 3389 (RDP)
    • 5900 (VMRC on Virtual Server hosts)
  • VM Host: VMware ESX hosts
    • 22 (SSH for SFTP files to/from ESX hosts) - this is only used for ESX host version 3.0 and 3.5 (not needed for 3.5i)
    • 443 (HTTPS for calling VI Web Services APIs)
  • P2V Source
    • 80 (HTTP, WinRM) - Mgmt
    • 135 (DCOM)
    • 443 (HTTPS, BITS) - Data
  • VMware VirtualCenter server
    • 443 (HTTPS for calling VI Web Services APIs)

For more information:  VMM Ports and Protocols