Month: June 2009

I’ve just been doing some P2V work when I encountered the below warning for the first time.  I had just run a system scan:

“There is already an SSL certificate associated with port 443 on machine MachineToP2v.yourdomain.com.

Ensure that no application on machine MachineToP2v.yourdomain.com listens for HTTP traffic on TCP port 443 during the conversion. Alternatively use registry key HKLMSoftwareMicrosoftMicrosoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager ServerSettingsP2VBITSTcpPort on the VMM server to change the P2V transfer port number and add the necessary firewall rule for TCP port 443 on machine MachineToP2v.yourdomain.com.

ID: 13252”

The physical server I am going to convert to virtual (P2V) is running an IIS site on TCP 443 or SSL.  This would interfere with the P2V conversion because it runs on 443 by default.

The solution was simple:

• Identify an alternative port that you figure is free on your entire network, e.g. I picked 30666.
• Ensure that there are no communication problems between the physical machine and the VMM 2008 server on your alternative port.  Check physical and Windows firewalls.
• Add a REG_DWORD called “P2VBITSTcpPort” to “HKLMSoftwareMicrosoftMicrosoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager ServerSettings”.  Set the decimal value to your alternative port number.
• Restart the Virtual Machine Manager Service on the VMM 2008 server.
• Start the P2V all over.

That worked fine for me.

There’s a new SKU in the July price list for SPLA (Service Providers Leasing Agreement – AKA hosting licensing) called DataCenter Per Processor Outsourcer.

One of the perks for retail/volume licensing (non-hosted) was that you could by DataCenter edition for each of your hosts physical processors.  That gives you unlimited free Windows Server licensing for VM’s running on that host.  That’s a major money saver on hosts with lots of VM’s.

In SPLA up to now, we only had a SKU for anonymous DataCenter.  This only allows anonymous free licensing for VM’s.  Anonymous means that Windows can play no role in authenticating the users, e.g. SharePoint, Exchange, Active Directory, etc.  You cannot run authenticated (those where Windows plays a role in user authentication) licenses on VM’s on this host, even if you pay for them!  This meant that you either:

• Ran 2 Hyper-V clusters: 1 using Enterprise for authenticated and one running DataCenter for anonymous in larger installations.  This doubled your hardware costs.
• Or just run 1 Hyper-V cluster: running Enterprise where you didn’t get the benefits for anonymous licensing.  This put smaller companies at a pricing disadvantage to larger companies.  It was also pretty expensive compared to the new model.

The new Outsourcer SKU’s replace the authenticated licensing model.  It also adds DataCenter to the list, fixing a major flaw with SPLA licensing for hosting companies using Hyper-V for virtualisation.  There is also a new 3 year license which saves a bit of money over the per month model.

EDIT #1:

Our SPLA LAR called me up to ask a technical question.  Then he warned me not to go making plans on the Outsourcer SKU.  He’s seen an issue in the text that MS needs to rectify immediately before the July price list takes effect.  Hopefully it will be sorted out soon.

Virtual Boy posted about some free training that’s going for Hyper-V:

“Microsoft is offering some free Hyper-V training. You will need to enter a specific access code 9350-Y2W6-3676 and sign in with your Live ID.  The course “Collection 6319 – Configuring Hyper-V in Windows Server 2008” includes the following modules:

1. An overview of the Hyper-V technology
2. Creating a virtual environment
3. Deploying systems in a virtual environment
4. Configuring high availability in a virtual environment
5. Administering a virtual environment with SCVMM”

You can sign up here.

One of the nice new additions in VMM 2008 R2 is Quick Storage Migration or QSM.  This allows you to migrate a VM from one storage device to another, e.g. from one SAN to another, one LUN to another or from a per LUN installation to a CSV (Cluster Shared Volume).

Edwin Yuen (senior dude at Microsoft on virtualisation), talks about the mechanics of QSM in an excellent blog post.  The short story is:

• A Hyper-V snapshot is taken by VMM 2008 R2 of the VM.
• This means our VM is running from AVHD’s, a form of differencing disk.  All writes now happen to the AVHD’s.
• VMM 2008 R2 is free to copy the original VHD(s) to the new destination.
• The VM is put into a saved state and the AVHD’s are merged into the VHD’s at the destination.  This takes probably around a minute, depending on how long the VHD copy took and how much data was written to the AVHD’s.
• The VM starts up on the destination, running only from the VHD’s.

There’s something to watch out for here in moving from “1 VM/1 LUN” installations.

Imagine you have a VM with 100GB of disk and 2GB RAM.  How big do you think the LUN will be for that on a Hyper 2008 cluster?  Probably only around 113GB ( (VHD+RAM)*1.1 = (100+2)*1.1 = 113 ).  That’s because you can’t waste disk.  You’ve just enough space for your VHD’s, the config files and a save state for the RAM.  If you snapshot that VM it will (by default) create a snapshot in the same location.  That AVHD will start out small but will grow.  If the file VHD copy takes a while and there’s lots of write activity to the AVHD then there will be an issue.  Your LUN will fill and your VM will pause during quick storage migration (QSM).

I don’t have the gear to test VMM 2008 R2 so I’m going to ask about this.  VMM 2008 doesn’t have a field to specify an alternate LUN for snapshots but the Hyper-V console does.  Maybe you could use that to relocate the snapshot AVHD’s in advance of a QSM from a per-LUN installation to a CSV?  I suspect this should work … you can change that Hyper-V setting while a VM is running.  It’s times like this I wish I had €20-€30K of gear to test with!!!!

EDIT #1:

I contacted Ben Armstrong (Virtual PC Guy) via the MVP newsgroups and he got onto the VMM team.  The answer is "yes" to the problem and solution.