Hyper-V.. Get your right Tools for Successful Movement

Virtualization saves money. The more extensively you implement virtualization, the more savings you can realize across your IT infrastructure.

The question is how to use the right tool to estimate your next movement in the virtualization space.

Integrated Virtualization ROI Tool

Strengthen the case for your solutions, reduce your sales cycle, and
demonstrate the total cost of ownership advantage of Microsoft
virtualization solutions by leveraging the Microsoft Integrated
Virtualization return on investment (ROI) tool.
http://www.microsoft.com/virtualization/tco-roi.mspx

Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=67240B76-3148-4E49-943D-4D9EA7F77730&displaylang=en

Offline Virtual Machine Servicing Tool
The Offline Virtual Machine Servicing Tool manages the workflow of updating
large numbers of offline virtual machines according to their individual
needs.
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=8408ECF5-7AFE-47EC-A697-EB433027DF73&displaylang=en

Microsoft HyperGreen Tool to determine the reductions you can achieve in kilowatts, money and CO2 emissions.

Gear Up – Key Sales Enablement Tool
The World is buzzing around virtualization. Your customers, our competitors,
and the media are all talking about it. But everyone’s having the wrong
conversations. Virtualization is far bigger than what people think.
Together, Microsoft and you can tell a better story – one that completely
changes the game.  Download the kit in Onenote.
www.ms-gearup.com

Link.Net Its official! You are now Voice Ready for Microsoft Office Communicator.

CONGRATULATIONS

Today We have Passed Microsoft assessment and Became officially UC Voice Partner  and we will be listed on Microsoft website http://www.microsoft.com/uc/partners/voice.mspx

Yes Officially on Microsoft UC Page along with Nortel , Siemens ,Gold System and other Big Boys

We are also officially now part of highest UC technical program, Microsoft Technical Adoption Program (TAP).

More Info here : http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/isv/bb190413.aspx

Special thanks for Katherine Green and Keith Hanna from Microsoft for thier time and support

I have to really thank two of our great team members who have been working really hard on that to pass Microsoft requirements and deadlines , Thanks to Mina Nagy our UC team lead for outstanding effort and the great work he did and thanks to Caroline Ramzy who has shown great troubleshooting skills in solving all problems we faced.

Let Everyone Know …They are playing with the Big Boys now

This post based on Mina Nagy E-mail.

Hyper V Snapshots VS SCVMM 2008 Checkpoints

A customer asked me if there is any difference between  Hyper-V snapshot and SCVMM  checkpoint.

According to my research and testing and confirmation from Brandon Jiang from Microsoft, I would like to say there is NO difference between Hyper-V snapshot and SCVMM checkpoint if the Virtual Machine host is Hyper-V.

When we managed SCVMM checkpoints, we will be able to see those Snapshot we created in Hyper-V.

When we create a SCVM check points, we will also see the created checked point is stored as a new Hyper –V.

Apart from this point, as we know, SCVMM can also manage VMware ESX Server
hosts and Virtual Server 2005 SP1 hosts. 

So there is no difference between Hyper-V snapshot and SCVMM checkpoint if the Virtual Machine host is Hyper-V.

 

Hyper-V &Processors Architectural Overview

 People still have some confusion about the technique that Virtual Processor for VM on Hyper-V use. 

 

Hyper-V uses a hypervisor-based architecture and leverages the driver model of Windows for broad hardware support. The hypervisor partitions a server into containers of CPU and memory. As a micro-kernel, it provides mechanisms for inter-partition communication upon which our new high-performance synthetic I/O architecture is built. The root partition owns physical I/O devices and provides services including I/O implemented by the virtualization stack to the child partitions.

The virtualization stack implements emulated I/O devices such as an IDE controller and a DEC 21140A network adapter. However, it is expensive to virtualize such devices. Sending a single I/O might require multiple trips between the virtualization stack and child partition. Instead, Hyper-V exposes synthetic I/O devices that are specially designed for VM environments. These devices are attached to VMBus, which is a plug-and-play capable bus that uses shared memory for efficient inter-partition communication. The Windows guests detect the devices on VMBus and loads the appropriate drivers

Synthetic I/O in Hyper-V uses a client-server architecture with Virtualization Service Providers (VSPs) in the root and Virtualization Service Clients (VSCs) in the child. This architecture significantly reduces the cost of sending an I/O. Virtual Server customers should observe a major reduction in CPU usage in I/O-intensive loads when they migrate their VMs to Hyper-V.

 

 

 

Hyper-V and the Processors

 

The hypervisor handles the interrupts to the processor, and redirects them to the respective partition. Hyper-V can also hardware accelerate the address translation between various guest virtual address spaces by using an IOMMU (Input Output Memory Management Unit) which operates independent of the memory management hardware used by the CPU. An IOMMU is used to remap physical memory addresses to the addresses that are used by the child partitions.

 

The Virtualization Infrastructure Driver (VID) is the kernel mode component of the virtualization stack.

The VID provides partition management services, virtual processor management services, memory management services for partitions.

 

At last, we could change the processor percentage while VM is working. However, you only able to change the following parts:

 

-Virtual Machine reserve

-Virtual Machine limit

-Relative Weight

 

View the article below to see what these settings mean:

 

Configuring CPU resources for virtual machines

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc720296.aspx

 

 

 

 Firstly, we must know that all processors inside the VM are Virtual Processors.

Guest OS does not have access to the physical processor, nor do they handle the processor interrupts.

 Instead, they have a virtual view of the processor and run in a virtual memory address region that is private to each guest partition.

To understand that well we must get a look at Hyper-V architecture.

 Hyper-V Architecture

Hyper-V (formerly known as “Viridian” and Windows Server Virtualization (WSv)) offers a completely new virtualization architecture.

 

How will Microsoft does the Live Migration through Cluster Shared Volumes

As Microsoft announced about 2 months ago the new Hyper-V live Migration in Windows 2008 R2. A lot of questions been rose how Microsoft will do that?

Actually I have been looking forward into that because I have a lot of reservations in this point.

Now Windows Server 2008 R2 Reviewers announce their (BETA) guide which includes a lot of information according this new feature.

Microsoft will use new Cluster Shared Volumes (CSV) feature within Failover Clustering in Windows Server 2008 R2. The CSV volumes enable multiple nodes in the same failover cluster to concurrently access the same logical unit number (LUN). From a VM’s perspective, each VM appears to actually own a LUN; however, the .vhd files for each VM are stored on the same CSV volume.

This technique is same as VMware ESX for live migration as now all cluster nodes would access the shared volumes by using these fully qualified paths.

The good news is administrators won’t have to reformat their SANs to take advantage of CSVs.

I believe that Microsoft will provide more and more functionality in Hyper-V 2 and hope that they stuck in their promise to be just in place update.

 

Show Hidden Network Connection in your virtual machine

When you change VM configuration file or copy the VHD file you may face problem that IP you enterned for the new connection is already assigned.

That is because the VM has the old NIC but hidden.

To work around this behavior and display devices when you click Show hidden devices:

1. Click Start, point to All Programs, point to Accessories, and then click Command Prompt.
2. At a command prompt, type the following command , and then press ENTER:
   set devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices=1
3. Type the following command a command prompt, and then press ENTER:
   start devmgmt.msc
4. Troubleshoot the devices and drivers in Device Manager.NOTE: Click Show hidden devices on the View menu in Device Managers before you can see devices that are not connected to the computer.
5. When you finish troubleshooting, close Device Manager.
6. Type exit at the command prompt.Note that when you close the command prompt window, Window clears the devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices=1 variable that you set in step 2 and prevents ghosted devices from being displayed when you click Show hidden devices.

If you are a developer or power user and you want to be able to view devices that are not connected to your computer, set this environment variable globally:

1. Right-click My Computer.
2. Click Properties.
3. Click the Advanced tab.
4. Click the Environment Variables tab.
5. Set the variables in the System Variables box.

Domain Controllers P2V, Be Carefull with USN rollback

What is USN Rollback?

A domain controller tracks objects in AD based on their Update Serial Numbers (USN). Every object in AD has a USN. As objects are modified, the USN increases monotonically, like an odometer on a car. The latest USN on each DC is called the “high water mark”. During replication each DC compares its USN high water mark with the USN high water mark of its neighbors.

USN rollback happens when an older copy of Active Directory is restored but the computer fails to notify the other domain controllers that it was rolled back to an out-of-date copy of AD (and therefore that its high water mark has rolled back).

SCVMM provides guidance during the P2V process with domain controllers that should prevent both the new VM and the physical domain controller from being on at the same time. This must be avoided because it would lead to a situation called USN rollback .
The P2V wizard recommends offline mode which should be used so that the old and new domain controllers do not have the possibility of being online at the same time. By default, the NICs will also be disabled for additional safety. The NIC of the VM should only be re-enabled once the P2V process is complete and has been verified. At this point, the physical source machine will be off, and should never be brought back onto the network again before wiping it completely.

USN Rollback with Virtual Machine

USN rollback can happen if you use Virtual Machine’s snapshot feature to roll back a virtual DC to a prior snapshot without simultaneously rolling back all the other virtual DCs.

For more information about USN rollback, see the Microsoft Knowledge Base articles “How to detect and recover from a USN rollback in Windows 2000 Server” (Q885875), and “How to detect and recover from a USN rollback in Windows Server 2003” (Q875495).

AD in Virtual Enviroment Using Hyper-V

Domain controllers is a critical point in any infrastructure, As virtualization rises more and more in the production infrastructure we must be aware about consideration when hosting AD DS in Hyper V environment.
I am talking about hyper V as it is Windows Server Virtualization technology.

Microsoft already released a recommendation for this process KB888794

Hyper-V is a thin layer of software between the hardware and the Operating System (OS) that allows multiple instances of an OS to run, unmodified, on a single physical server at the same time. This technology is an ideal platform for developing and testing software, consolidating production servers, and managing business continuity (growth and scalability).

When you host any virtual machine, there are major hardware factors to consider like:

• CPU
• Memory
• Disk
• Network
• Local devices

By virtualizing these resources on a physical computer, host software lets you use fewer computers to deploy operating systems for test, development, and production roles.
However, certain restrictions apply to the deployment of domain controllers that runs in a virtual hosting environment. These restrictions do not apply to a domain controller that runs on a physical computer.

1. Check your host hardware compatibility .The Windows Server catalog is available at the Microsoft Web site http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=111228.

2. If the virtual hosting environment software correctly supports a SCSI emulation mode that supports forced unit access (FUA), unbuffered writes that Active Directory performs in this environment are passed to the host operating system. If forced unit access is not supported, you must disable the write cache on all volumes of the guest operating system that host the Active Directory database, the logs, and the checkpoint file.

3. Don’t place them in locations where mission-critical services like Exchange require a domain controller

4. An Active Directory domain controller requires regular system state backups to recover from user, hardware, software, or environmental problems. The default useful life of a system state backup is 60 or 180 days depending on the operating system version and the service pack revision during the installation.

5. Don’t use them to host Flexible Single Master Operation (FSMO) roles

6. Don’t use them for bridgehead roles

7. In a production environment, you may want to back up the system state of at least one domain controller in every domain several times a day.

8. Make sure that all the domain controllers perform inbound replication on all locally held Active Directory partitions according to the schedule defined on site links and connection objects, especially in the number of days that is specified by the tombstone lifetime attribute.

9. When a domain controller runs in a virtual hosting environment, do not pause the domain controller for long periods of time before you resume the operating system image. If you do pause the domain controller for a long time, replication may stop and cause lingering objects. The following Error event may be logged in the Directory Service log:
Event ID: 2042
Source: NTDS Replication
Type: Error
Description: It has been too long since this machine last replicated with the named source machine. The time between replications with this source has exceeded the tombstone lifetime. Replication has been stopped with this source.

10. To roll back the contents of Active Directory to a previous point in time, restore a valid system state backup. A system state backup can be restored up to the tombstone lifetime number of days after the backup was performed. The backup must have also been made on the same operating system installation as the operating system that you are restoring.

11. Active Directory does not support other methods to roll back the contents of Active Directory. In particular, Active Directory does not support any method that restores a snapshot of the operating system or the volume the operating system resides on. This kind of method causes an update sequence number (USN) rollback. When a USN rollback occurs, the replication partners of the incorrectly restored domain controller may have inconsistent objects in their Active Directory databases. In this situation, you cannot make these objects consistent. We will discuss this problem in another post.

12. Microsoft also do not support using “undo” and “differencing” features in Virtual PC on operating system images for domain controllers that run in virtual hosting environments.

13. We recommend that you locate critical server roles on domain controllers that are installed directly on physical hardware. Critical server roles include the following:

Global Catalog servers
Domain Name System (DNS) servers
Operations master roles, also known as flexible single master operations (FSMO)

14. Make a list of the hotfixes that must be installed on the domain controller that runs in the virtual hosting environment.

15. We recommend that you install either Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 or the 875495 hotfix on all Windows Server 2003 domain controllers. On a Windows 2000 Server-based domain controller, install the 885875 hotfix.

Hyper-V Event Logs and what it represents

Hyper-V Configure

Events are logged here that relate to problems access a virtual machine
configuration files

Hyper-V High-Availability

Events are logged here that relate to quick migration or failover clustering
between two virtual machines

Hyper-V-Hypervisor

Events are logged here that relate to problems with the Hypervisor itself,
or if the Hypervisor fails to load because of a problem. If the Hypervisor
doesn’t load because hardware virtualization is not enabled in the Bios, the
event will not be logged here

Hyper-V-Integration

Events are logged here that relate to problems with the integration
components

Hyper-V-Network

Events are logged here that relate to problems with the virtual switch

Hyper-V-SynthNic

Events are logged here that relate to network communication using the
synthetic NIC

Hyper-V-SynthStor

Events are logged here that relate to any storage issues when using the
synthetic storage

Hyper-V-vhdsvc (Hyper-V-Image-management service)

Events are logged here that relate to virtual hard disks. Failures to add.
Delete merge, expand convert and mount virtual hard disks will write events
to this log

Hyper-V-VMMS

Events are logged here that relate to the Virtual Machine management service

Hyper-V-Worker

Events are logged here that relate to the worker processes functionally.