SCVMM installation Error ID 205

“System Center Virtual Machine Manager was not installed successfully. Review the error log information and then try running Setup again.
ID: 205. Details: Fatal error during installation”

This error mostly related to your domain environment and DNS resolution. When server is trying to install VMM it could not get the correct SPN in active directory.

to troubleshoot problem like that make sure of:

1- Your SCVMM is connected and authenticated by windows 2003 domain controller. Some times windows 200 DCs raise this problem.VMM require domain level 2003 to go.

2- Verify that your VMM server FQDN is the same as your domain.

3- Remove the computer account from the domain and then rejoin again. Some times you have to do that.

4-Check the DNS resolution and verify that you can resolve your domain name well.

Some Hyper-V Networking Recomendation

Hyper-V uses a network virtual switch driver to control Windows Server network I/O. The switch abstracts the adapter by shutting down the adapter’s internal services and inserting itself between the network adapter and the virtual machines, including applications and services running on Windows Server 2008. Once in place, the switch wedges itself between virtual machines and the Windows 2008 server physical adapter.

Here it is some recommendations for networking:

1. Isolation of Networks connections

try to isolate your network connection, Use a dedicated network for management and a separate one for each VM.

2. Disable TCPOffloading

http://itproctology.blogspot.com/2008/05/hyper-v-tcpoffloading-poor-network.html

3. Measure Network Performance

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc768535.aspx

4. Use synthetic network drivers
Hyper-V support two types of virtual network drivers: emulated and synthetic. Emulated drivers provide the highest level of compatibility. Synthetic drivers are far more efficient, because they use a dedicated VMBus to communicate between the virtual network interface card (NIC) and the root/parent partitions physical NIC. To verify which drivers are used from within a Windows guest OS, you can use Device Manager.

5. Increasing network capacity
Network performance is important for various types of applications and services. Whether running one or a few VMs, you can often get by with just a single physical NIC on the host server. But if many VMs compete for resources and a physical network-layer security is to be implemented, consider adding multiple gigabit Ethernet NICs on the host server.

An unexpected network error occurred. Group Policy processing aborted. Even ID: 1054

Some times when you try to log in to the domain from some computers you get that error “An unexpected network error occurred). Group Policy processing aborted. Even ID: 1054″

It’s a known issue with servers with AMD processors .

Go into the boot.ini file in the root system directory, add the following parameter:

/usepmtimer

Now Boot.ini should look like that

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS=”Windows Server 2003, Standard” /noexecute=optout /fastdetect /usepmtimer

Then restart your computer.

Hyper-V-Integration EventID 4096

Sometimes you see warning in the Event Viewer for Hyper-V-Integration.
“EventID 4096 The Data Exchange integration service is either not enabled, not running, or not initialized.”

In previous cause for me it was a HAL problem as sometimes you import a VHD previously created in virtual server or virtual PC to hyper-V.

If the operation system is Vista Remove the ICs and do the following steps

1. Start msconfig
2. Go to the Boot tab
3. Click the Advanced options button.
4. Check the Detect HAL checkbox.
5. Click OK.
6. Click OK.
7. Reboot the VM.
8. Install Integration Services.

To update HAL for XP

 1. Boot off your Windows 2000 or XP CD.

2. When asked if you want to install or repair your current installation, choose Install.

3. Then, follow the steps to upgrade Windows (even though you’re not technically upgrading, you are updating your HAL).

 

I found another work around for this problem… you can test it.

 First Take a snapshot if it’s not already done because we never know what is going to happen, then simply delete (or rename) two file on the guest machine

C:\WINDOWS\system32\DRIVERS\wdf01000.sys and

C:\WINDOWS\system32\DRIVERS\wdfldr.sys

After that, you just need to reinstall the integration services.

Updating SCVMM RTM Evaluation Version to Licensed

Now that VMM 2008 has RTM’ed, a lot of folks are asking what are the upgrade paths between the various SKUs of VMM. I wanted to list two upgrade paths here and the associated process around this.

Upgrade Paths supported by this method when the build number of VMM is the same:

1.      VMM 2008 Evaluation Edition –> VMM 2008 Retail Edition

2.      VMM 2008 Workgroup Edition –> VMM 2008 Retail Edition

Steps to follow:

1. Install VMM RTM Server EVAL or WORKGROUP
2. Uninstall VMM RTM Server EVAL/WORKGROUP with Retain Data
3. Install the VMM Full Version (Select or Retail SKU) while using the Retained data from the step above.
4. After installation, connect using the Administrator Console
5. Wait for the Library Refresher to run or right-click on the library server and select Refresh
6. Go to Managed Computers View and right-click on all the hosts/library servers. Execute the reassociate action for servers that are in the “Access Denied” state. Hosts and Library Servers should be usable again at this step.

Source

 

HP Network Teaming Software with Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V

HP ProLiant Network Teaming Software (ProLiant Network Teaming Software (HP Network Configuration Utility (NCU) version 9.35 or greater) that solves the problem between HP network teaming and Hyper-V networks.

Patrick Lownds published a white papers about that.

NIC teaming is the process of grouping together several physical NICs into one single logical NIC. This would provide more fault tolerence and load balance the traffic.

Hyper V roles had some problems with HP networking as I mentioned before here. before I was not recommend to install HP teaming on the servers with Hyper-V role enabled.

Check the white papers

 Download here:

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bc/docs/support/SupportManual/c01663264/c01663264.pdf

Virtualization Platform Comparison

 The following is an overview comparison of the feature and support set for:
-Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008
-Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 Beta
-Windows Server 2008 R2 Beta (Enterprise and Datacenter Editions)

Capabilities	Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008	Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2	Windows Server 2008 R2 EE, DC
Processor Architecture x64 only	Yes	Yes	Yes
Hypervisor-based	Yes	Yes	Yes
Product Type	Standalone product	Standalone product	Operating System
Number of Sockets (Licensing)	Up to 4	Up to 8	Up to 8 = EE | Up to 64 = DC
Number of cores supported by the hypervisor	24 (with QFE)	32	32
Memory	Up to 32 GB	Up to 1 TB	Up to 1TB
VM Migration	None	Quick and live migration	Quick and live  migration (EE & DC)
Administrative UI	Command line, text based configuration utility  and remote GUI management	Command line, text based configuration utility  and remote GUI management	Command line, remote management, and local GUI  (Hyper-V Manager MMC)
Management	Existing management tools
Virtualization Rights for Windows Server guests	0	0	EE = 4 VMDC Edition = unlimited VM per proc
Number of running VM Guests	Up to 192, or as many as physical resources allow	Up to 256, or as many as physical resources allow	Up to 256, or as many as physical resources allow
Storage	Direct Attach Storage (DAS): SATA, eSATA, PATA, SAS, SCSI, Firewire, Storage Area Networks (SANs): iSCSI, Fiber Channel, SAS
Planned Guest OS support	Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2003 SP2, Windows 2000 Server, Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10, Windows 7, Windows Vista SP1 & Windows XP SP3/SP2

The Source:Taylor Brown
Hyper-V Integration Test Lead
http://blogs.msdn.com/taylorb

Hyper-V 2…Live Migartion First look

Today I finished setting up my first Hyper-V 2 with cluster shared volume.. The CSV volumes enable multiple nodes in the same failover cluster to concurrently access the same logical unit number (LUN).

The live migration worked fine but still need tests with different workloads. many changes had been made in Hyper-V 2. I will mention them in later posts.

 

Live Migration R2

Microsoft and EMC renew their (virtualization) vows

Big happenings in NYC yesterday as SteveB and EMC’s CEO Joe Tucci met with a room-full of IT execs to talk about an extended 3-year alliance. The announcement is here. In short, the companies are going to work more closely together in the areas of data loss prevention, collaboration and virtualization.

What’s that you say? EMC – 80% owner of VMware – working more closely with Microsoft around virtualization? Here’s an excerpt from the joint announcement:

Microsoft offers one of the fastest-growing and most cost-effective virtualization solutions from the desktop to the datacenter, including the ability to manage both physical and virtual environments from a centralized management console. EMC’s technology solutions enable storage, protection and management of information in Microsoft virtualized environments including Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V, Microsoft System Center, and jointly supported mission-critical workloads such as Microsoft Exchange Server, Microsoft SQL Server and Microsoft SharePoint Server. EMC Consulting’s Application Practice, a thousand-person strong team with deep Microsoft knowledge, provides expertise in assessing, planning and implementing Microsoft’s technologies in a wide array of virtualization solutions.

That’s all well and good – 1,000 EMC consultants trained on WS08 Hyper-V, System Center and key Microsoft applications that will be virtualized. But can those 1,000 consultants really look past VMware?

 Thankfully CNET interviewed Steve and Joe and asked them about it. Here’s the excerpt:

In the agreement, one of the areas you talked about working more closely in is virtualization. VMware is affiliated with EMC, which is probably Microsoft’s biggest competitor in virtualization. So how credible is the notion that your companies can work together? And where do you draw the lines of cooperation? And how does that benefit customers?

Ballmer: We’re not sitting here pretending we’re partnering with VMware. That’s more competition.

View article at the source…

Upgrade your Windows 2008 Cluster to R2

yesterday I upgraded my Hyper-V cluster based on Windows 2008 to Windows 2008 R2 beta.

There is not any clear upgrade path officially by Microsoft so I have to discover it by myself.

The process is very straight forward maybe because of that I got some down time. but as a test lab I think it is ok.