What is Next ?!! Virtual Machine Manager vNext

Source

hvredevoort wrote a very interesting post about VMM VNext and I through it is important to be shared.

During the MMS2010 keynote of Bob Muglia, Edwin Yuen  showed a glimpse of SCVMM vNext. The short demo presented a very interesting view ahead of what a complete virtual management solution looks like.

Next to the familiar categories like Hosts, Virtual Machines, Library, Jobs and Administration a few new categories were visible: Datacenter, Network and Storage. Apparently these will be the new building blocks in the deployment of virtual machines and most likely also Hyper-V hosts. Along with Server App-V to deploy server apps to running virtual servers. By means of a model/template objects were dragged and dropped to define a new service/server combination.

Also the concept of the private cloud and the public cloud is translated in the user interface of SCVMM vNext. In the top lefthand corner, we can now see a new light blue (azure?) container with several private clouds as well as a hosted cloud. As I wrote earlier, we can expect to move servers and services between the two clouds.

Building blocks in the SCVMM vNext Library for creating servers

SCVMM vNext will support Virtual Sever, Hyper-V R1, Hyper-V R2, Xen and VMware. By the time the product is ready it will probably also support the latest incarnation of Hyper-V, if it still listens to that name in 2011/2012. For a System Center roadmap see my previous blog.

Factor of 10 reduction cost for hardware
Factor of 10 greater speeding up application delivery
Factor of 10 reduction in cost

This translates to faster time to market for solutions, and a great enabler for the business.

Part of the cost savings is done by means of scale of buying and using server hardware. As I wrote in my blog http://hyper-v.nu/blogs/hans/?p=159, the new server form factor for the cloud is the container. A picture was shown of how Microsoft gets its servers delivered: by the thousands and ready-to-go on delivery.

Here are some shots of the new SCVMM vNext GUI:

What’s coming up with the next versions of SCOM and VMM!

The System Center Team write new  post about SCOM and VMM vision

For the folks onsite at MMS with us, hope you are having a great time! For the rest of us, we’re trying our best to keep you informed of the happenings in here!

Among a ton of exciting vision from Bob Muglia’s keynote yesterday, we’re also announcing the capability set that we are working on for the next version of System Center. Our goal is to provide a unified management solution that delivers datacenter services across physical, virtual and cloud environments using an integrated app/service-centric model.

With that in mind, I’ve included below some of the Dynamic IT / cloud capabilities that Virtual Machine Manager vNext and Operations Manager vNext will deliver to lower operational expense and increase agility in the enterprise datacenter. Some of these capabilities will take a few cycles to fully realize, but we’re going to get rolling on them in the next version J

System Center Virtual Machine Manager

• Service lifecycle management, including creation, deployment and updates to cloud apps/services – Leverages app virtualization technology and service modeling to perform image-based service composition, deployment and updates.
• Creation of private clouds – Enables “Infrastructure as a Service” for the enterprise datacenter and allows self-service scenarios; discovery and assignment of logical/virtualized network and storage pools to apps/services
• Federation across clouds – Enables workload mobility between on-premises, service provider and public clouds (e.g. Windows Azure) in a secure manner
• Policy-based dynamic resource optimization – Ensure optimal utilization of your datacenter resources (e.g. policy driven power management), deeper Operations Manager/PRO integration
• Deeper Opalis Integration – Offers deeper integration with Opalis for enhanced orchestration and automation across multiple sub-systems

System Center Operations Manager

• Unified on-premises and cloud monitoring – Enables hybrid cloud deployment scenarios with “single pane of glass” monitoring
• Outside in/end user experience monitoring for geo distributed cloud services (based on synthetic transactions)
• Service oriented network and storage monitoring (e.g. monitor and troubleshoot network and storage resource pools assigned to services)

Also check out this video I recorded to get additional information on our Datacenter vision and SCOM/VMM vNext.

Finally, I also wanted to highlight the Dynamic Infrastructure Toolkit for System Center, which will allow you to build your private cloud foundation very soon to help you accelerate your journey to the cloud. What’s more, this solution is built on top of technology you currently have and are very familiar with – System Center and Windows Server!

We will provide additional details on these capabilities (and others) as we finalize them!

Look forward to hear your thoughts,

Ananthanarayan Sundaram (Anant)

Product Marketing Manager, System Center

VMM Tricks: Removing missing VMs from the VMM Administrator Console

Source

it has come to our attention that there are some customer complaints with regards to missing virtual machines in the administrator console after a cluster failover. Since it is not easy to remove those VMs from the VMM administrator console, Gokcen from our team wrote a script that will allow you to clean those VMs up. Here are the steps to follow.

1. First close the VMM Administrator Console
2. Then, stop the VMMService windows service on the VMM server computer
3. Take a FULL database backup of the VMM database [Just in case; this is a safety net in case something goes wrong]
4. Now you are ready to clean up any missing VMs. it is important to notice that all missing Virtual Machines in this VMM environment will be deleted from the VMM database. we are not deleting any virtual machines from any virtualization host computer. basically we are not touching anything on Hyper-V, Virtual Server, or VMware ESX computers
5. Install Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio Express on the same computer where the VMM database exists. This is a free download from microsoft and you can search for it on Bing.
6. Open SQL Management Studio, select the VMM database and run the SQL script below. That should delete all VMs that are in the missing state in the VMM database.
7. Once the sql script is completed, restart the VMMService and open the Administrator Console. All your missing VMs should now be “eliminated” 🙂

<<

BEGIN TRANSACTION T1
DECLARE custom_cursor CURSOR FOR
SELECT ObjectId from
dbo.tbl_WLC_VObject WHERE [ObjectState] = 220

DECLARE @ObjectId uniqueidentifier

OPEN custom_cursor
FETCH NEXT FROM custom_cursor INTO @ObjectId

WHILE(@@fetch_status = 0)
BEGIN

DECLARE vdrive_cursor CURSOR FOR
SELECT VDriveId, VHDId, ISOId from
dbo.tbl_WLC_VDrive WHERE ParentId = @ObjectId

DECLARE @VDriveId uniqueidentifier
DECLARE @VHDId uniqueidentifier
DECLARE @ISOId uniqueidentifier
OPEN vdrive_cursor
FETCH NEXT FROM vdrive_cursor INTO @VDriveId, @VHDId, @ISOId
WHILE(@@fetch_status = 0)
BEGIN
DELETE FROM dbo.tbl_WLC_VDrive
WHERE VDriveId = @VDriveId
if(@VHDId is NOT NULL)
BEGIN

DELETE FROM dbo.tbl_WLC_VHD
WHERE VHDId = @VHDId
DELETE FROM dbo.tbl_WLC_PhysicalObject
WHERE PhysicalObjectId = @VHDId
END
if(@ISOId is NOT NULL)
BEGIN

DELETE FROM dbo.tbl_WLC_ISO
WHERE ISOId = @ISOId
DELETE FROM dbo.tbl_WLC_PhysicalObject
WHERE PhysicalObjectId = @ISOId
END

FETCH NEXT FROM vdrive_cursor INTO @VDriveId, @VHDId, @ISOId
END
CLOSE vdrive_cursor
DEALLOCATE vdrive_cursor

—————–
DECLARE floppy_cursor CURSOR FOR
SELECT VFDId, vFloppyId from
dbo.tbl_WLC_VFloppy WHERE HWProfileId = @ObjectId

DECLARE @vFloppyId uniqueidentifier
DECLARE @vfdId uniqueidentifier

OPEN floppy_cursor
FETCH NEXT FROM floppy_cursor INTO @vfdId, @vFloppyId
WHILE(@@fetch_status = 0)
BEGIN
DELETE FROM dbo.tbl_WLC_VFloppy
WHERE VFloppyId = @vFloppyId

if(@vfdid is NOT NULL)
BEGIN
DELETE FROM dbo.tbl_WLC_VFD
WHERE VFDId = @vfdId
DELETE FROM dbo.tbl_WLC_PhysicalObject
WHERE PhysicalObjectId = @vfdId

END

FETCH NEXT FROM floppy_cursor INTO @vfdId, @vFloppyId
END
CLOSE floppy_cursor
DEALLOCATE floppy_cursor

—————-
DECLARE checkpoint_cursor CURSOR FOR
SELECT VMCheckpointId from
dbo.tbl_WLC_VMCheckpoint WHERE VMId = @ObjectId

DECLARE @vmCheckpointId uniqueidentifier

OPEN checkpoint_cursor
FETCH NEXT FROM checkpoint_cursor INTO @vmCheckpointId
WHILE(@@fetch_status = 0)
BEGIN
DELETE FROM dbo.tbl_WLC_VMCheckpointRelation
WHERE VMCheckpointId = @vmCheckpointId

FETCH NEXT FROM checkpoint_cursor INTO @vmCheckpointId
END
CLOSE checkpoint_cursor
DEALLOCATE checkpoint_cursor

————————-
———Clean checkpoint

DELETE FROM dbo.tbl_WLC_VMCheckpoint
WHERE VMId = @ObjectID
exec [dbo].[prc_VMMigration_Delete_VMInfoAndLUNMappings] @ObjectId

DECLARE @RefreshId uniqueidentifier
exec [dbo].[prc_RR_Refresher_Delete] @ObjectId, @RefreshId
DELETE FROM dbo.tbl_WLC_VAdapter
WHERE HWProfileId = @ObjectId
DELETE FROM dbo.tbl_WLC_VNetworkAdapter
WHERE HWProfileId = @ObjectId
DELETE FROM dbo.tbl_WLC_VCOMPort
WHERE HWProfileId = @ObjectId

DELETE FROM dbo.tbl_WLC_HWProfile
WHERE HWProfileId = @ObjectId

DELETE FROM dbo.tbl_WLC_VMInstance
WHERE VMInstanceId = @ObjectId

DELETE FROM dbo.tbl_WLC_VObject
WHERE ObjectId = @ObjectId

FETCH NEXT FROM custom_cursor INTO @ObjectId
END
CLOSE custom_cursor
DEALLOCATE custom_cursor

COMMIT TRANSACTION T1

>>

SCVMM reports error 10637 when Red Hat Linux selected as the Operating System

Source

A new KB article regarding Red Hat is being posted on Microsoft Support any day now. For those of you who do not need the official KB, here’s the content. This is a relatively minor fix. If you are not a SQL expert, find one, or just follow the simple instructions for the free SQL Studio Express Edition. Thanks!

URL when published http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2022557.

Symptoms

On System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2, it is possible to select Red Hat as the virtual machine ‘Operating System’ property for a virtual machine hosted by Hyper-V. The job, however, will show as failed with Error 10637. This can occur when creating a new virtual machine or changing this property on an existing VM. This does not affect the function or stability of the virtual machine itself. This property is found on the General tab of the virtual machine properties dialog.

Error (10637)

The virtualization software on host server.contoso.com does not support the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 operating system.

Recommended Action

Specify a host with different virtualization software and then try the operation again.

Cause

A database entry that identifies the list of supported virtual machine operating systems per hypervisor requires an update. The following actions will remain unavailable for Red Hat virtual machines in SCVMM following this update:

• Shut down of the guest operating system from the SCVMM Administrator Console
• Detection and display of the VM Additions version for a virtual machine in the SCVMM Administrator Console and with Windows PowerShell
• Display of the computer name of the guest operating system

Resolution

Using SQL Server Management Studio Express, or a full SQL installation, make a full backup of the SCVMM database. Next, connect to the SCVMM database (VirtualManagerDB by default). Open a new query and enter the commands below. The number of affected columns will be returned in the ‘Messages’ window if present.

update tbl_IL_OS

set OSFlags=0x14

where Name like ‘Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5%’

How to fix slow offline P2V times in VMM b/c of duplex switches

Source

Michael Michael has shared some content that is very useful about troubleshooting offline P2V.

if you are experiencing a slow offline P2V time due to a network that has 100mb full duplex enabled on the switch end, here is the process you can follow to make the data transfer a lot faster. This process will modify the WIM image used for P2V and modify the type of networking drivers being used, The entire process is reversible as long as you copy back your backup WIM image from step #4 and replace the changed one with the backed up one.

1.       Enable tracing on the source computer during an offline P2V. (create a file named scvmm_enable_winpe_tracing.txt and save it to the root of the source computer’s boot volume before you start the P2V). This file does not need to contain any data or information. A trace file named scvmm_winpe.etl will be created and saved on the source computer.

2.       Start the P2V and the stop it after it starts to copy the hard disk.

3.       Log back onto the source machine and find what Network driver WinPE loads during the P2V (There should be a text file on the system drive that WinPE has created)

4.       Copy the boot.wim file from the VMMData directory on the VMM Server to a new directory (Make a copy just in case anything goes wrong!)

5.       Using imagex from the Windows WAIK (Located under Program Files\Windows AIK\Tools\amd64) , mount the boot.wim file as ReadWrite(Example: imagex /mountrw d:\temp\boot.wim 1 d:\temp\Mount)

6.       Open the directory where the image was mounted to and navigate to the WinPE driver repository (Windows\System32\DriverStore\FileRepository)

7.       Open the folder that contains the driver, then the inf file.

8.       Search for “Duplex” > Find each section of the inf that references this key and modify the default to what you want.

9.       Save the file and then commit the changes back to the Wim file (Example: imagex /unmount /commit c:\mounted_images)

10.   Copy the Boot.wim file and replace the one under the VMMData directory in SCVMM.

11.   Start the P2V and watch it fly J

This blog post is courtesy of Andrew Auret.

VMM host in Needs Attention state after installation of KB978560

Just a quick note to say that once the latest rollup for VMM R2 has been applied, you will need to update the agent on each managed host.  Until the agent has been updated, the host status displayed in the VMM console will be “Needs Attention”.

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.

978560 Description of the System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 hotfix rollup package: February 9, 2010
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;978560

This hotfix can be found on Windows Update or downloaded manually.

To manually download the hotfix rollup from the Microsoft Update Catalog, visit the following Microsoft Web site :

http://catalog.update.microsoft.com/v7/site/Search.aspx?q=978560

Note The Microsoft Update Catalog has different versions of the update package. These different versions have the EVAL , OEM , RETAIL , and WORKGRP labels. Download the appropriate version for your installation.

If the rollup was downloaded from the Microsoft Update Catalog, do the following to install the hotfix rollup package on the Virtual Machine Manager server:

1.	Extract the VmmServer64Update-RETAIL.cab to a temporary directory.
2.	Open an elevated command prompt, and then run the following command to install the update: msiexec /update vmmServer64Update-RETAIL.msp BOOTSTRAPPED=1 Note The name of the package varies based on the version that was downloaded.
3.	After the hotfix rollup package is installed on the Virtual Machine Manager server, update the VMM agent on the Hyper-V and Virtual Server hosts. Source

Free e-book on Microsoft Virtualization

“Microsoft has a broad portfolio of Virtualization technologies and you talk about the concept of ‘from the Desktop to the datacenter’; what does that really mean?”

The short answer is that there are many ways to approach virtualization, depending on what you and your business actually needs. There is no ‘one size fits all’. The challenge is first understanding what you are trying to achieve, then leveraging the right technology to make it happen.

The longer and infinitely more detailed answer can also be found in a book written by a friend of mine and Microsoft MVP, Mitch Tulloch. As it happens, his e-book entitled ‘Understanding Microsoft Virtualization Solutions’ (ISBN: 9780735693371) is being made available as a free download until the end of February 2010 here.

Understanding Microsoft Virtualization Solutions

By Mitch Tulloch with the Microsoft Virtualization Teams
ISBN: 9780735693371

This guide will teach you about the benefits of the latest virtualization technologies and how to plan, implement, and manage virtual infrastructure solutions. The technologies covered include: Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V, System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008, Microsoft Application Virtualization 4.5, Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualization, and Microsoft Virtual Desktop Infrastructure.

As it happens, his new book (out today – Feb 17th 2010) is called Understanding Microsoft Virtualization R2 Solutions.

Source

VMM Tricks: Manage VMM in restrictive Active Directory environment

So you want to manage your VMM infrastructure while keeping an eye on your Hyper-V hosts security. looks like everyone wants to do that. So have you through before about using restricted Group group policy to limit membership for your local admins group.

let’s have a look at when to use a domain account for the VMM Service. In a restrictive Active Directory environment in which restricted Group group policy is in effect, we must use a domain account instead of Local System for the VMM service account. The Restricted Groups policy does not allow machine accounts to be a member of the local Administrators group. Under a Restricted Groups group policy, the VMM machine account will be removed from the computer, leaving VMM unable to communicate with the host. In that situation, VMM places the host in a Needs Attention state and places the VMM agents on hosts and library servers in Not Responding status in VMM.

For our “Restricted Group group policy” issue, we have two methods to fix it.

Method one

==========

Add the VMM Server machine account to the Administrators “restricted groups” group policy setting. But if a Restricted Groups policy is defined and Group Policy is refreshed, any current member not on the Restricted Groups policy members list is removed. This can include default members, such as administrators.

Note To add the VMM Server machine account to the restricted group setting, use the following syntax:

domainname\severname$

Method two

=========

Create a new organizational unit in the domain, move the Virtual Server and Hyper-V Server computer objects to the new OU and then configure the new organizational unit to block policy inheritance.

There are some articles which indicate the restricted group:

Updates to Restricted Groups (“Member of”) behavior of user-defined local groups

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/810076/en-us#appliesto

Restricted Groups

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc785631(WS.10).aspx

Restricted Groups Policy Settings

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc756802(WS.10).aspx

Thanks Alex to help in that.

VMM Tricks: V2V failed with Error (protocol error : too many authentication failures for root)

When you perform a V2V from a VMware ESX 3.5  host and I get the following error:

Error (12709)
The operation on did not complete successfully because of the error:  Server sent disconnect message: type 2 (protocol error : too many authentication failures for root)

My VMM is connected to ESX using the root account and the security certificate is valid. After some googling I found the source of the problem, SSH login for the root was disabled.

Since ESX 3.0, for increased security, SSH is disabled by default for the root account on an ESX host. That is, the actual sshd service does not allow root logins. Non-root users are able to login with SSH. This is another layer of protection in addition to the host firewall.

To enable root login for SSH and SCP clients:

1. If you have physical access to the ESX host, login to the console of your ESX host as the root user .

If you can only connect to the ESX host over the network, connect using an SSH client (such as PuTTY) and log in as a user other than root. After you are logged in, switch to the root user with the following command:

su –

Note: If you do not have any other users on the ESX host, you can create a new user by connecting directly to the ESX host with VMware Infrastructure (VI) or vSphere Client. Go to the Users & Groups tab, right-click on the Users list and select Add to open the Add New User dialog. Ensure the Grant shell access to this user option is selected. These options are only available when connecting to the ESX host directly. They are not available if connecting to vCenter Server.

1. Edit the configuration file for SSH with the following command:nano /etc/ssh/sshd_config
2. Find the line that starts with PermitRootLogin and change the no to yes. You can find this line about 2 pages down from the top. Save the file by first pressing Ctrl-O and then Enter. Exit with Ctrl-X.
3. Restart the sshd service with the command:service sshd restartNote: Alternatively, use the command:

   /etc/init.d/sshd restart

Resources

Enabling root SSH login on an ESX host

VMM tricks:Manage Certificate to connect to VMs in the Perimeter

Most of the times you may need to host some VMs on the Perimeter host, After adding this host to VMM console you still can’t connect to the VMs on that host.

Your remote desktop connection failed because the remote computer cannot be authenticated..Certificate Errors.

Here you are the steps:

1. Open SCVMM console
2. Connect to  virtual host
3. you must be get attention and opportunity to save certificate from host
4. open mmc – certification – machine – <windows2008 R2 hyper-v host>
5. Add certificate to Personal folder
6. open mmc – certification – machine – <client>
7. Add certificate to Personal folder
8. Add central-CA  certificate from domain to Root Trust folder

Check it there