Month: January 2009

I picked up some useful information at the Windows User Group meeting last night where David Houston talked about Small Business Server 2008.  The main things for me revolved around Hyper-V:

• SBS 2008 is supported when it runs as a VM in Hyper-V.
• Running the Hyper-V role on an SBS 2008 server is not supported and certainly not recommended.
• You can purchase SBS 2008 Premium and run the Hyper-V role on the second (license included) server.

Microsoft has updated the Product Usage Rights documents for Hyper-V for internal or volume/OEM licenses.  Chris Wolf has a post that discusses the changes.  Here’s the high/low lights:

• If you run Windows 2003 guests on a Windows 2008 Hyper-V host server and that host is your only W2008 machine (and offering no other services) then you no longer need W2008 CAL’s.  This is a good thing.  Prior to this update you would have needed W2008 CAL’s, strictly speaking.
• Server OS licenses can only be moved between clustered hosts once every 90 days unless there is adequate licensing for the guest OS on all hosts.  This is a bad, VERY bad thing.

The server OS requirement is plain silly.  It’s trying to steer people towards buying Windows 2008 Data Center edition.   DC edition for a host is a perfect solution for anyone using more than 4 guests on a 2 node cluster (more than 8 on a 3 node, etc) using volume licenses.  Why?  Because you get unlimited free server OS licenses for guests.  Your Data Center Edition licenses covers all of the server OS license requirements for all of your guests.

But this stinks for anyone not in that scenario.  What about VMware ESX?  What about SPLA (hosting license scheme from MS).  SPLA virtualisation licensing was written by a neanderthal with no grip on reality.  We’re stuck with DC edition only being available for unauthenticated (no CAL scenario) implementations.  Some eejit decided that it would be illegal to run authenticated guest OS’s on an unauthenticated host even if you paid for the guest OS! 

So what’s going to happen?  Quite simply people are going to flick a middle finger at the PUR like they’ve been doing for years and license how they see fit.  They’ll license their guest OS and CAL’s, move VM’s around as necessary and place them on whatever hosts they have to.  Making up rules for the sake of complicating things is now warranted and the sooner MS’s licensing monkeys see this, the better.

This is in no way a criticism of the MS products.  I like them.  I’ve chosen to use them because of their current performance/managability and because of where MS is taking them in the near future.  But the licensing managers in MS need to be taken outside and put down like "ol’ yeller" by Microsoft’s executives.

I was just browsing through the features of Hyper-V in Windows Server 2008 R2.  One of them was new to me.  MS are including a VDI connection broker.

VDI is where virtual machines run a desktop operating system.  Clients use a thin client (or stripped down PC) to log into a VM using a protocol such as RDP or ICA (in the Citrix implementation).  In this Hyper-V solution, the broker supports:

• Persistent VM’s: Each user is assigned a VM that is always there for them.  Their software and data stays on the machine when they log off.  When they log in again, they log into that same VM.
• Pooled VM’s: A standard template VM is created.  A new VM is created from the template when a new user logs in.  Standard tools like shared folders and folder redirection (Intellimirror) mean that the user stores nothing on the VM.  The user is never guaranteed to log into that VM again.  Ideally, the VM is trashed when the user logs off, maybe only keeping a certain number of deployed VM’s free in advance of users logging in – to save resources.  I don’t know if that’s in Windows Server 2008 R2.

It’s nice to hear MS are working on this.  I hope they also work on making this available through the Remote Desktop Services Gateway.

If you are backing up Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V Virtual Machines using Volume Shadow Copy Service then you should check out a new hotfix.  It rectifies 3 issues:

Issue 1

If you back up a Hyper-V virtual machine that has multiple volumes, the backup may fail. If you check the VMMS event log after the backup failure occurs, the following event is logged:
Log Name: Microsoft-Windows-Hyper-V-VMMS-Admin
Source: Microsoft-Windows-Hyper-V-VMMS
Event ID: 10104
Level: Error
Description:
Failed to revert to VSS snapshot on one or more virtual hard disks of the virtual machine ‘%1’. (Virtual machine ID %2)

Issue 2

The Microsoft Hyper-V VSS Writer may enter an unstable state if a backup of the Hyper-V virtual machine fails. If you run the vssadmin list writers command, the Microsoft Hyper-V VSS Writer is not listed. To return the Microsoft Hyper-V VSS Writer to a stable state, the Hyper-V Virtual Machine Management service must be restarted.

Issue 3

You cannot restore a Hyper-V virtual machine if the virtual machine was configured to use a legacy network adapter.

I mentioned a while ago that I had a problem with refreshing the VMM agent on my Hyper-V lab machine in Virtual Machine Manager 2008.  The error produced in the job was:

"Error (1700) The Virtual Machine Manager service on the CINWSVR008 server stopped while this job was running. This may have been caused by a system restart.   

Recommended Action To restart this job, navigate to the Jobs view and select the job in the results pane. Then, in the Actions pane, click Restart."

At the same time I’d get errors 1 and 1999 in the VM Manager application log in event viewer.  The key word to note is PostVirtualNetworkUpdate. 

It turns out that this is bad.  I’ve previously mentioned how it was bad to every configure HP’s network card teaming on the BL460C if you intended to run Hyper-V?  Guess what?  This appears to apply to any server.  My lab machine is a DL380G5 which has different NIC hardware than the NIC’s on my BL460C’s that I’m using for VM networking.  Here’s what MS PSS had to say:

"This is a known bug and it is fixed in the next version.  The issue is caused by Hyper-V reporting 2 NICs with the same name.  Here are the known workarounds:

1. Update drivers in the hope that that resets names.
2. Avoid binding VM’s to either of the duplicate NICs.
3. Disable all but one of the duplicate NICs on the host.
4. Disable host refresh and only do on-demand refresh (for all hosts but the affected one).

The bug ID is 38264 and will be included in the next product release (R2).  Other than these stated “workarounds” there isn’t much else that can be done".

Eeeek! 

Option 2 is out.  The server has 2 NIC’s only: one for the parent and one for guests.  That also rules out option 3.  Option 4 is a no-no.  There’s no way I’m disabling automatic refresh on a VMM server that manages my cluster where VM’s can be migrated from A to B.  A bit more searching on my part and I found that the driver upgrade seemed to work for some people on HP hardware.

I’ve applied the latest drivers to this machine but no joy with that.  The MS engineer looking at the call has come up with another idea which I’m going to look at asap.

EDIT #1:

After further work with a very patient and responsive MS engineer we’ve run out of ideas.  This one doesn’t fit previously diagnosed cases.  BTW, the engineer in question is coincidentally publishing a blog post on this issue later this week.  My case is being forwarded to the product group to see if they have further ideas.

EDIT #2:

The MS engineer working the case, Mike Briggs, has documented a workaround that seems to fit most scenarios with these symptoms.

EDIT #3:

I’ve been informed that the developers are now working on a bug fix.  Yeap, I found a new one that isn’t covered by the above.  It seems my NIC configuration doesn’t quite fit the profile of the above, i.e. no lingering ghost NIC’s.  There’s no schedule on the release of the fix; the procedure is that your call gets closed when it gets to this part of the process.

MS Ireland is running an event called Virtualisation Unplugged at short notice in Cork and Belfast.

Who should attend: IT Managers, IT Professionals

Summary: Virtualisation Unplugged is a full day technical session with Microsoft experts to discover a complete set of virtualisation tools from desktop to datacentre that will improve business continuity and maximise ROI. The day will cover loads of technologies including Windows Server 2008, Hyper-V, System Centre Virtual Machine Manager, Terminal Services and Application Virtualisation.
James O’Neill, Virtualisation expert from the UK sub, has had great success touring all over the UK delivering this seminar and we are delighted to bring him to Ireland to deliver two ‘Virtualisation Unplugged’ tour dates here. Date: 3rd February, 4th February

Location:
Belfast (3rd) – Register Here!
Cork, (4th) – Register Here!

Cost: Free Event