Hyper-V Forum

How to setup Hyper-V and SAN failover

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 22:54:17 Z

Thought I would throw this question out to the collective as I can't find a good answer anywhere. My organization is very versed in Hyper-V and in the process of working with Hyper-V2 and CSVs. However, we can't seem to figure out (or maybe we are not calling it what it should be called) a way to implement some level of SAN failover. SAN replication can easily be achieved but that is not the same as SAN failover. Here is a good example: suppose you have two Hyper-V servers in front of a single SAN. If setup in CSV, if either Hyper-V server goes down, the other takes over (ie Live Migration). What if the SAN goes down? Is there such a thing as a SAN cluster? If so, is it something that is handled via Hyper-V?

You can replicate all your data in near-real-time to a second SAN. However, something is going to have to tell Hyper-V, 'hey, you now need to pull VMs from SAN2 instead of SAN1.' Seems this is either a middle ware piece of software which lives on the Hyper-V hosts, or possible an appliance. I don't know. Can't think we are the first ones to run into this issue. And, I can't believe with all the automation surrounding CSV that the SAN would be the single point of failure and require a manual process to mount up the VMs. Anyone have ideas on how to do this? If the question has been asked before, I sincerely extend my apologies.

Many thanks in advance.

XP x64 Catch-22 with Hyper-V

Thu, 26 Nov 2009 00:29:46 Z

My XP x64 installation disk is pre-service packs. The Hyper-V Integration Services cannot be installed unless the XP x64 is with service pack 2 or above. When I attempt to apply service pack 2 (or 3) I get the error "The updatebr.inf file is invalid.". As a result I cannot apply the integrated services installed to gain access to the network (and other devices).

Is there any way to create a new XP x64 install disk that has service pack 2 (or 3) already merged in?

p.s., I'm running Server 2008 R2 with Hyper-V.

- Michael Faklis

Find VM’s older than N days to free disk space

Thu, 26 Nov 2009 00:24:51 Z

I wrote a Python 2.6 script to find and list VM’s older than, e.g., 90 days on my Windows workstation, so that I could compress them, move them to a 1TB drive attached to my machine, or to a Windows file share on the LAN, or delete them. You can read about it and download it from

http://blog.sharevm.com/2009/11/23/find-vms-older-than-n-days-to-free-disk-space/

VHD maximum safe size

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 17:58:21 Z

What is the largest VHD file you would recommend using in a VM - for speed and safety etc.

Is 350GB fixed size reasonable? (for a FileServer HA VM)

thanks

Windows 2008 R2 with Hyper-V losing network connection

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 20:36:49 Z

I have a Windows 2008 R2 Enterprise Server with HyperV. I created a Virtual Machine running Windows 2008 R2 Standard.
I have a second physical computer running Windows 2008 Enterprise, where I opened 2 command prompts; from one command prompts I run ping -t <Win2008 R2 host> and from the other one I run ping -t <Win2008 R2 VM>. The 2 ping get the expected responses in less than 1 ms

From the Win2008 R2 VM I run wbadmin start systemstatebackup -backuptarget:\\<Win2008 server>\Share\

Pretty soon after the backup starts, the pings start failing: while there are some successful responses (some of them after quite long time, like 1500 ms), most of the returns are either Request timed out or Destination unreachable !
On the VM, wbadmin was able to find all files (~72K) and it repeatedly displays Found <72k> Files (the same number).
I could also see that the VHD files on the target were slowly growing but the pings did not improve at all. The backup failed after about one and a half hour.

I have disabled the TCP chimney and RSS on all 3 OSes hoping that this fixes the problem but it does not.

It seems like the problem is caused by the virtual adapter created by Hyper-V .
I removed that adapter (from Hyper-V network management), then stopped Hyper-V and I ran wbadmin to backup the host's system state to the same network share (as in the original test, from VM) and it looks like the network connection between the 2 computers is stable; I did not get not even one request timed out.

The computers are clean (installed short time ago) with no other software installed. They have 2 NICs but only one of them is configured and connected to network.

Has anybody had similar problems?

Thanks,
Dan

What's the best Hyper-V use case to a smooth migration?

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 13:02:35 Z

Dear all,
Let me describe how we currently use Virtual Server, afterwards, we'll be able to discuss a migration to Hyper-V.

We are a little company doing software development. In order to automatically test our production, I've created a build and test platform made of:
- a computer with XP Pro
- some Powershell scripts to build the projects and prepare the test run,
- Virtual Server 2005 R2 with some VMs to run the tests
- the Windows VMs use also some powershell scripts to test the products.

My need is now to test our products on 64 bits OSes, so my first idea was to use Hyper-V, and now I see there is also MED-V, and...I'm lost. I've got the Hyper-V Server DVD, but I've read there is no GUI, so no possibility to use it to build our software and prepare the test run then manage VMs to run the tests...

So here I am, asking you what a good solution could be to fulfill our needs?

Thanks.

Passthru not working after adding drive letter

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 15:13:44 Z

I setup two hosts in a failover cluster. I have one VM running Win2003 Enterprise (x86) with two disks. The C: drive is a VHD and the E: is a passthru. The VM was working great until I added a drive letter to the passthru at the Host. Now the passthru drive won't show up on the VM. I've since deleted the drive letter, but the VM can't see the passthru drive.
I know the passthru works fine because when I add back the drive letter at the Host I can see all of the data.
How can I get the VM to see the passthru again?

Live Migration Fails Error (12711)

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 16:50:02 Z

Hello, I have two hyper-v servers clustered with an iSCSI backend hosting my 6 virtual machines. Everything is set up correctly as far as I know as Livemigration works with 4 out of the 6 virtual machines. However, two of the virtual machines fail every time. The error that I am receiving is below. I have already, deleted one of the machines from Hyper V and re added it thinking that rebuilding the configuration files might work, it did not work. There doesn't seem to be a lot on this error message. If anyone has any suggestions please let me know. Thanks, Michael

Error (12711)

VMM cannot complete the WMI operation on server HS001 because of error: [MSCluster_ResourceGroup.Name="3bf3c300-fa50-49bb-b868-c0d06122b1d8"] The cluster group could not be found. (The cluster group could not be found (0x1395))

Recommended Action:
Resolve the issue and then try the operation again.

cluster printers running on hyper-v onm win 2k8

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 00:28:19 Z

I am running hyper v and built two win 2008 servers to test clustering print manager. I dont know how or where to share the storage? The pc running hyperv is in workgoup mode and the two 2008 servers I am trying to cluster are in a domain I created. They are both joined to the cluster but I need to share the storage, this is where I am confused?

CPU in VM will at random times max out for 20-30min then go back to normal

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 17:37:47 Z

I have a VM that runs good most of the time, but at other seemingly random times the CPU will suddenly spike to 100% for about 20-30min before returning to normal.

The task manager in the VM does not show anything unusual, so I'm thinking the VM is suddenly getting less resources. only problem is that this VM is the only VM on the entire box. The node itself of course shows little resource usage. I also notice in performance manager C3 idle time in performance monitor is near 80% when this is occuring, yet the VM is maxed out. VMM shows the VM is using ~25% when the VM itself is reporting 100%. The thing is this VM is not using a lot of resources, I am sure of that...

any ideas???

thank you

Looking for Hyper-V Customer Reference

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 16:07:01 Z

I'm a Microsoft Gold Partner working on an opportunity with a local bank. They are asking for a reference of another bank in the New England area that has done a server consolidation project with Hyper-V and I have not been able to find one. Been through all the case studies and whatnot but no help. Does anyone know of a bank or credit union in NH,VT,MA,CT,ME or RI (or even NY) that has Hyper-V in a production environment? I'm up against another vendor that is playing the VMWare game of discredit to win!

Move VM on SAN LUN to new SAN LUN

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 15:06:16 Z

I have a VM that is running in a cluster and stored on a SAN lun via volume guid. Something is not write with the clustered disk as far as the cluster is concerned. Failover is not working correctly and the disk needs to be moved to available storage and then brought back into the resource to get it back online. I am planning on moving the VM to a new SAN lun with a new guid. My question is about the easiest and safest process to do so.

The tools I have available are the following:

SCVMM 2008 R2
Failover Cluster Console
Hyper-V manager

My plan is as follows:

Format and add a new SAN lun into the cluster.
Shutdown the vm.
convert the existing volume guid to a drive letter and map to it.
Copy all files on existing lun to local node storage temporarily.
Create new LUN and copy data to it.
Create new VM pointing to the new lun and existing hard disk.

Any easier way? Anyone see anything wrong with this plan?

Thanks in advance.

Chris

New Intel i7 8 core processors

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 13:28:09 Z

What will happen on a new Intel i7 8 core processor with only one 1VM. Since I can only assign 4VP's to a VM, will I only use half of the CPU capability?

Import Fails "The system cannot find the path specified" (0x80070003)

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 21:10:02 Z

I did see a post related to this that did not fix my problem by editing the "EXP file value "ScopeOfReference".

Environment:
Host A
OS- "Win Server Standard SP1" 64 bit (2008R2)
Domain Admin Account Logon same for both Hosts
Hyper V Server role enabled
Hyper V Manager utilized through RDP Session on this Host.
SCVMM 2008 Trial ver.2.0.3444.0 (Stopping use due to the high number of failed jobs and support complexity)

Host B
OS- Hyper V Server R2 (Core)
Domain Admin Account Logon same for both Hosts
Hyper V Enabled
Drive D: dedicated to VM's
Drive V: Storage

Issue:
I have some VM's on Host B that I want to move back over to Host A.

Action:
I use Hyper V Manager to select the VM on Host B and "Export" it to the local storage drive partition. From the same Hyper V Manager, I now select the Host A server and select Import Virtual Machine and browse to the folder with the exported VM. I select the root folder name "My Virtual Machine Name" that contains [Snapshots, Virtual Hard Disks, Virtual Machines].

At thispoint I get "Import Failed".
Unable to search imort files under location "V:\My VMName\". Error: The system cannot find the path specified. (0x80070003)

I can explore, open and edit these files from Host A Windows Explorer browsing to Host B shared V:\ drive.

I just decided to trash SCVMM due to the complexity of operation work around (outside the box) and resources involved in finding solutions so I really need to get Hyper V Manager working correctly ASAP.

P.S. I have already rebooted both Host Servers and I did remove server Roles "Application Server" and "Web Server" from Host A since I had assumed it was causing me problems with SCVMM prior.

Anyone think they know the exact cause of my current issue?

ISA Delaying packet transmission

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 22:04:17 Z

We are running ISA 2006 with all the required updates and patches. Recently we introduces a Point of Sale device behind the FW that is running into transmission issues (timeouts). All other devices such as workstations are not having any issue at all.

The problem took some time to isolate to the ISA Firewall. The problem is ISA is for some reason delaying the delivery of packets of these POS system to the HOST system (on the internet).

Our tracing has confirmed that packets are arriving in at the FW (on the inside) and tracing (on the outside) has confirmed that these packets are delayed (sometimes a few seconds) before being sent out in a burst.

The result is that the POS system thinks there has been a problem and retries the operation only to have the ISA server repeat holding packet delivery. It’s as if ISA is trying to be efficient and is gathering several packets for a given destination and sending all together.

Does anyone have some insight?

File Cluster - traditional style or virtual machine

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 23:29:26 Z

Greetings

we are running W2008-R2 Hyper-V on a HP C3000 on four blades setup as two separate clusters (HP2012I and MSA2000 over ISCSI)

we have several virtual machines in HA mode running fine (member servers, specialized roles) (can live migrate fine etc)

we now want to setup our main File - Print server within the cluster

Does everyone recommend setting in up as a plain file cluster (application) - or to do it as a VM?
(we could only add data to a test File VM by creating additional virual harddisk / vhd file bought would rather address the file data outside this)
(we dont need clustered shared volume storage for this new file cluster as we can dedicate this lun to this one task)

(we would rather not have our 300+ GB of file data sitting in a large vhd file)

thanks - any advice welcome

What would my solution be with Hyper-V and Terminal Server?

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 08:39:24 Z

Hi guys.

We would like to create a remote office with 10 Thin Client users on Server 2008 standard and a Terminal Server. We have the same solution running in another of these branches but on Server 2003 , but on 2 physical servers. PDC on Serve 2003 SBS, and the Terminal Server on Server 2003 Standard.

With 2008 and Hyper-V we would like to know if we could run one physical server running Windows Server 2008 standard, and a Hyper-V virtual Terminal Server, both on the same box.

Is this possible and viable?

Could you guys advise on the best solution?

Thx in advance

Donovan

Create a VHD of an existing hard disk

Mon, 21 Apr 2008 08:01:21 Z

Hi,

I have an real machine runnning that i want to move to an Virtual server. Is it possible to create an vhd file of the harddisk of the running machine so i don't need to reinstall everything?

grtz Dave

.vhd file - OK to create one that fills physical disk?

Sat, 16 Feb 2008 01:38:39 Z

What is best practice as to what percentage virtual hard disks should consume of the full capacity of a physical disk (or RAID array)?

Thanks.

Off state in Hyper-V manager after node failover

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 16:26:22 Z

I have a four node hyper-v rtm cluster. I had a situation come up and some vms failed to other nodes in the cluster. After a refresh of the cluster in SCVMM R2, everything looks correct and all VMs are running. However, when I open Hyper-V manager and connect to all four nodes, I see some guests in an OFF state on the node they were previously running on. They did not disappear but are still showing on the old node in an OFF state. Has anyone else had this issue?

Thanks,

Chris

Hyper-V slower on W2K8 full install versus core install?

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 12:55:11 Z

I'm looking to use Hyper-V for a small home server so I'm not as concerned about stability (compared to a corporate environment). My main concern is actually speed and data integrity.

Here are my options for a Hyper-V install:
1) Hyper-V Server 2008 R2
2) Windows Server 2008 R2 (Full) w/Hyper-V Role
3) Windows Server 2008 R2 (Core) w/Hyper-V Role

The "main" purpose (or virtual machine) of this computer will be to serve files from my RAID-6 array.

I manage my RAID 6 using an application called LSI MegaRAID which monitors the array status and sends e-mail alerts if anything happens. I THINK this needs direct hardware access so I'm guessing it needs to be installed on the parent partition which means I must install W2K8 FULL install.

Does anybody know anything about that?

Is a W2K8 full install my best choice?

As I mentioned, I'm not too concerned with a larger "attack surface" (re: stability). I'd rather sacrifice a bit of stability for ease of management but speed is really my main concern.

Enabling the Hyper-V role on Windows 2008 R2 causes the NVIDIA driver (and ultimately the system) to crash

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 05:45:40 Z

Hi!

I recently bought a machine with i5 processor, 4 GB RAM, NVIDIA 8400 GS card. I installed Windows 2008 R2 x64 enterprise edition on it and the drivers for the NVIDIA card. Everything worked fine. But then I added the Hyper-V role in it. And on the next reboot, the NVIDIA driver caused a bugcheck.

To make sure that it was an interop issue, I tried reinstalling the OS a couple of times and then the driver. As long as the hyper-v role was not added, everthing worked cool. I have tried this with the drivers that came along in the CD and then I downloaded the latest drivers from the site for Windows 7/ Windows 2008 R2 x64.

Is this a known problem?

Thanks,

Ayush Gupta

Hyper-V hosts with Low max IOPS

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 10:35:28 Z

Hello,

When I use migration in SCVMM, all of my my hyper-v hosts have a no-star rating because the projected disk I/O utilisation exceeds the maximum of 1611, this maximum is the same on all of the hosts and seems very low. I'm not having any performance issues with my servers. Any idea why this maximum is so low?

Many thanks,
Jonathon

Pass-through Disk in 3 node cluster

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 03:57:03 Z

It is posible to use pass-through disk in a cluster with 3 nodes??
I have read this blog http://blogs.technet.com/askcore/archive/2009/02/20/adding-a-pass-through-disk-to-a-highly-available-virtual-machine.aspx however, I've like to know whether this is a valid configuration. We are using Hyper-V R2.

Hyper V R2 cluster - Live motion and PT disks

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 04:01:58 Z

Hi ,
The cluster is made of 2 HP DL380 hosts with a MSA2324FC storage .
All the setup passed the cluster validation tool .
I've created 8 VMs all with virtual disks on some CSV LUns .
All went fine and Live motion worked as well.

Then I tried to add a PT disk to a VM.
I presented the LUN to the two hosts.
On one of them I enabled it and initialized , then I disabled it .
Went in the Hyper-v MMC and added the LUN to the VM.
In the guest OS I formatted it .

Then I tried to live migrate the VM and it fails
cluster validation tool fails as well and VMM2008 reports the VM as "unsupported cluster configuration"

does anyone know if that's a supported scenario , I've had different answer on this, and what might be the problem if were supported

Thanks
Stefano

Microsoft Virtual BIOS failed to power on

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 11:07:02 Z

I spent so much time looking for a solution to this problem and can't find any. Here's the error:

By hypernova
I'm positive that Hypervisor is running. My processor is i7-860 and motherboard is Gigabyte P55M-UD2. I'm a student (using R2 from Dreamspark) so I'm not very fimilar with this topic. I would appriciate any help. Thank you.

Server Model Recommendations?

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 22:03:26 Z

I am curious as to why I have been unable to find any online resources discussing the "best" hardware to use as a Hyper-V/VM host machine. In the SQL Server world, there seems to be a general concensus that for heavy duty enterprise db's, go with the HP ML370. I could find no such obvious recommendation for a Hyper-V server. Perhaps there are too many implementation possibilities...

If I want to avoid SAN and DAS for now, and I am lookign for the best machine to reliably host as many 2008 R2 Hyper-V VM's as possible, what are some of my options? Spindles and RAM and cores, oh my.

Is the ML370 worth considering? Is there a Dell option?

Hyper-V R2 Cluster and iSCSI RAID

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 21:44:13 Z

Hello, I have some questions about Hyper-V R2 Clustering and iSCSI. I am new to SAN and iSCSI, we have always used internal storage as our data storage needs have been light.

We currently run three Hyper-V stand alone servers with internal storage. As our environment has grown and we have about 15 VM's single point of failure has become a worry to us. We have decided to implement Hyper-V clustering with 3 Dell PowerEdge R610 and MD3000i iSCSI Array and two Dell PowerConnect Switches.

The servers will have 24 GB Memory, 2 Quad Core CPU's and 2 Quad NIC's 1 Quad will be TOE iSCSI enabled the other for 4 for 1 managment NIC and 3 for VM's. 2 servers to run the VM's and one as a Hot Spare. We can add additional servers to cluster if we need to scale up and add more VM's.

Questions:

1. What is the recommended RAID config for the iSCSI array for the cluster? I have seen RAID 10 recommended.
2. Is there a performance hit with iSCSI compared to internal storage. I would imagine some but how much?
3. Most of the VM's have low disk IO requirments but there will be a couple servers with SQL 2005 on Windows Server 2003 installed. Is it better to assign the SQL VM's all VHD's for all drives or make the System partition a VHD (which it has to be) and then make the transaciton log and DB's drives direct access to the iSCSI array. If we do the latter will the SQL Server VM's still be clustered fault tolerant?
4. For the iSCSI array (I know, this is the Hyper-V forum but I think relevant) it will have quad NIC's two to each switch and each Hyper-V host will have two NICs into each switch can and should the NIC's be teamed or Link Aggregated. Will this theoratically double bandwidth or just provide fault tolerance?

Thanks in advance and also if you can point me to any Hyper-V R2 cluster iSCSI SAN best practices docs or whitepapers I would appreciate it.

Thanks.

911 - Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 installer hangs

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 19:58:47 Z

I have a machine with Intel Q6600 processor. BIOS settings are done (with cold boot). I have a fresh SATA HDD (148 GB) - completely unformatted and raw

downloaded the lastest Hyper-V Server 2008 R2

Installation starts, shows Language selection. I select "English", no change on next screen (lang preferences) --> Install Now

The installation start and then after 10 seconds or so, it hangs. Keyboard and mouse are frozen. I have no clue what is happening (waited for 30 min just in case something is happening) but no luck. After 1 hour I forced reboot.

Can someone help?

Windows 2003 Sp2 SQL2000 SP4 - Poor Performance on Hyper-V R2

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 22:53:14 Z

Hi
its a simple issue and i have removed all the old legacy hardware software and management packs etc.. so it just has sql 2000, siebel 7.3 and symantec endpoint in unmanaged mode with just the antivirus components
the machine only had a single quad core and 4 gb of ram and i have assigned the same resources to it in the virtual environment.
but yet things do not perform even close to what it was, i do understand there will be a performance impact but this is fairly major
the host is basically the same machine the physical machine was on only it now runs hyper-v.

accessing the system is generally slow and everything seems to trundle along...
any suggestions ? on how to troubleshoot or fixes! :)

thanks in advance
John

John

Microsoft Hyper-V VSS Writer Issues

Tue, 05 Aug 2008 15:07:07 Z

I'm running Server 2008 with Hyper-V.

I have a simple script that uses diskshadow to utilize VSS to copy my virtual machines to a NAS device:

echo Delete Shadows Volume C:\                             > Script.dsh  

echo Set Context Persistent                               >> Script.dsh  

echo Begin Backup                                         >> Script.dsh  

echo Writer Verify {66841cd4-6ded-4f4b-8f17-fd23f8ddc3de} >> Script.dsh  

echo Add Volume C:\ ALIAS MyShadow                        >> Script.dsh  

echo Create                                               >> Script.dsh  

echo End Backup                                           >> Script.dsh  

echo Expose %%MyShadow%% X:                                 >> Script.dsh  

echo Exec CopyVM.CMD                                      >> Script.dsh  

echo Unexpose X:                                          >> Script.dsh  

echo Exit                                                 >> Script.dsh  

echo MD "\\192.168.1.14\backups\MYSERVER\MONDAY\Volume{148e48a7-543a-11dd-b6ed-806e6f6e6963}\" > CopyVM.CMD  

echo MD \\192.168.1.14\backups\MYSERVER\MONDAY\Volume{148e48a7-543a-11dd-b6ed-806e6f6e6963}\Virtual Machines\MYVIRTUALSERVER >> copyVM.CMD  

echo COPY "X:\Virtual Machines\MYVIRTUALSERVER\MYVIRTUALSERVER.vhd"  "\\192.168.1.14\backups\MYSERVER\MONDAY\Volume{148e48a7-543a-11dd-b6ed-806e6f6e6963}\Virtual Machines\MYVIRTUALSERVER\MYVIRTUALSERVER.vhd"  >> CopyVM.Cmd  

DiskShadow /s Script.dsh  

Exit

When i tested this on the server, it worked fine. It created the shadow, exposed it, copied it to my NAS and finished.

I added the job to scheduled tasks and set it to run in the evening. For some reason, it failed with the following errors in my event log:

App: E 'Mon Aug 04 20:12:33 2008': VSS - " An unhandled exception was encountered while processing a VSS writer event callback.  The VSS writer infrastructure is in an unstable state.  The writer hosting  

process must be restarted in order to resume VSS functionality.        Writer name:            Microsoft  

Hyper-V VSS Writer    Writer id:              {66841cd4-6ded-4f4b-8f17-fd23f8ddc3de}    Writer instance:  

       {ffee4b9e-2efa-4e65-b1ba-f90a2766b0d9}    Process command line:   C:_Windows_system32_vmms.exe  

   Process ID:             1788    Writer operation:       1013    Writer state:           4    Exception  

code:         0xe06d7363    Exception location:     02    "

Sys: E 'Mon Aug 04 20:12:28 2008': PlugPlayManager - " The device 'Msft Virtual Disk SCSI Disk Device'  

(SCSI_Disk_Ven_Msft_Prod_Virtual_Disk_2_9a9c854_0_000000) disappeared from the system without first being prepared for removal.  "  

Sys: E 'Mon Aug 04 20:12:28 2008': PlugPlayManager - " The device 'Storage miniport driver' (VMBUS_{9e7cea05-51c7-4d9f-815f-9c19b87c62ce}_1_3189fc23_0_{9e7cea05-51c7-4d9f-815f-9c19b87c62ce})  

disappeared from the system without first being prepared for removal.  "  

Sys: E 'Mon Aug 04 20:12:24 2008': volsnap - " The shadow copies of volume __?_Volume{e4435086-5ff7-11dd-a59d-00188b426d49}  

were aborted because the shadow copy storage volume was not present.  "

I did some googling, but nothing specific comes up for any of these errors on Server 2008 or Hyper-v.

I did go into diskshadow and noticed that my Writer for Hyper-V did indeed dissapear (as indicated by the error message). I restarted Hyper-V Virtual Machine management and was able to manually fire off the backup with no issue.

Anyone have any thoughts on what happened during my backups? I'm trying to stabilize the process until another backup solution is available that can do this process for me.

Thanks!

Dan

Making VM Highly Available

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 15:58:43 Z

(Using Microsoft Hyper-V 2008 R2)

I have a VM created locally on one of my nodes. This was done before i created a cluster hosting this and another node.
I would now like to move this VM to the cluster to benefit from HA.
How do i go about moving the VM form its default locally installed location to the a CSV location on my cluster?

kind regards

Roman

"Virtual Crossover" connecting 2 virtual switches

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 15:45:33 Z

I have a Hyper-v host with 2 NICs that are connected to 2 physical switches. Both of these are on the same network/vlan. This is to provide redundancy for an iSCSI network. The Storage arrays recommend this setup.

The arrays have 2 controllers, and each controller has 2 NICs. This way if either physical switch or pNIC goes down, the machine can still contact both controllers.

I have several guests on this host that also connect to the array. I could attach each guest to the 2 virtual switches, but I was wondering if it is possible to bridge those switches on the server. This way, each host would only connect to one virtual switch, and if one of the physical switches were to go down, the hosts would still have access to both controllers on the array through the "virtual crossover" in Hyper-V. This would also provide redundacy for the pNICs as well, because if one of them goes down, the Guests could use the other pNIC.

This seems like this should be an easy thing to do, but I can't find any documentation on it.

Any help would be appreciated.

Pass Through Disks used in VM with Mount Points supported?

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 14:24:41 Z

Hello,

we discussed another particular configuration this week and now I was wondering if this is supported by Microsoft.

But first a quick hardware overview:

three-node-failover-cluster running on blade servers
FC attached SAN volumes
clustered HA-VM with 4 SAN-volumes configured as Pass-Thorugh-Disks

And here is the crucial point:

Is it, inside of the VM, supported to mount 3 of the disks into the fourth ?
(First LUN configured with drive letter F:, second-to-fourth LUN mounted into F:\first, F:\second, and so on)?

Hypothetically speaking, it ought to survive, but is it supported?

As I'm not very familiar with mount points, what would happen if one of the mounted volumes fails already in SAN?
I guess the disk just disappears in the VM and the folder remains empty?
And if the "root" volume fails, the other disks remain unmounted in disk managment of the VM, don't they?

Thanks for your help,
regards from Stuttgart,
Daniel Wittmann

Script or Tool to Shutdown all XP/Vista/Win7 machines that do not have someone logged into them?

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 21:55:57 Z

I have about 100 test Virtual machines, mostly XP, but some Vista and Win7. I'm looking for a way to easily shutdown all the machines that do not have a current login, but skip the ones with someone logged into them Are there any scripts or tools out there for this?

unable to join server core to domain

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 21:54:21 Z

I am unable to join my server core to the domain. Below is the configuration and details.

One DC (full w2k3 installation) setup as DC\DNS\DHCP. One 2008 server core (server1) with no additional roles. They are both VMs on HyperV. Server1 obtained IP settings from the DC. When trying to join server1 to the domain, it always complained that the network path was not found. I got the same error when trying to map a network drive from server1 on the DC. The net use command got the same error even if I used IP instead, e.g. net use m: \\192.168.0.1\c$. Firewall were off on both machines.

server1 can ping the IP of the DC, the domain name. server1 can nslookup lookup the just the CN as well as the FQDN name. I tried assigning the same VLAN ID for both network adapter for each VMs and it didn't help.

Anyone has any insight on this?

Thanks

HKG

MS-DOS 6.22 under Hyper-V

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 03:58:33 Z

My question is really 2-part. I have a temporary need for an MS-DOS VM on my Server 2008 (R1) x64 test machine, so I downloaded MS-DOS 6.22 from the TechNet subscription area and created 3 VFD files for each of the install floppies. I then created a new VM and proceeded to install DOS 6.22, only the message I got was...

"Setup cannot install MS-DOS 6.22 because there is no operating system on this computer. This product is the MS-DOS 6.22 Upgrade..."

Question 1) Why in the world would the TechNet version of MS-DOS be an UPGRADE version??? That makes absolutely no sense at all. Is a "non-upgrade" DOS 6.22 installer available?

Question 2) I read that Hyper-V doesn't support MS-DOS. Is this just because there are no integration services for it? I really don't need them for this test.

SCVMM 2008

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 14:38:41 Z

WE had our SCVVMM 2008 Working fine with our 3 node cluster of Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V Machines.

But now SCVMM is having difficulties communicating with the 3 node cluster.

IF we try to reinstall the agent we get the following message.

Product: Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager Agent (x64) -- Failed to configure the WS-Management service. In the Local Group Policy Editor (gpedit.msc), navigate to Computer Configuration\Administrative Templates\Windows Components\Windows Remote Management (WinRM), and then ensure that there are no policy settings configured for WinRM Client or WinRM Service.

Anyone have any ideas? Thanks

Bill Bacoyiannis

Windows Server 2008 Enterprise virtual instance mouse capture does not work.

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 22:15:42 Z

Hello everyone,

I'm having some difficulty and would appreciate it if I could receive some assistance with this particular problem I'm having:

Host Server running Server 2008 x64 Hyper-V. (Already running three Server 2003 Guests)

Installed another guest using Server 2008 Std x32. Install was successful.

I can connect and login from Server Manager.

But Mouse capture not working inside guest.

I tried to install the Integration Services from the Action Menu.

It reports that Hyper-V Integration Components already installed.

It advised to use Windows Update to upgrade installation

From here I cannot do anything with the Guest.

Anybody have any solution for this? Thanks!

Is WMI Provider Microsoft's answer to VMware's VI SDK?

Fri, 05 Sep 2008 09:56:32 Z

Is WMI Provider Microsoft's answer to VMware's VI SDK?