Hyper-V notes from the field

Hi, I just had a interesting task I'd like to share: Customer had some Linux CentOS 6.3 VMs running on VmWare ESX. The task was to convert this machines to Windows Azure VMs. Here are the steps we made: 1. For the destination Platform...

Hi, I just had an issue that my 2012 Hyper-V Hosts did not have the new powershell commands available. (get-vm, etc) I installed the Hosts using SCVMM 2012 SP1 (beta) using Bare Metal Deployment http://blogs.technet.com/b/cloudytom/archive/2012...

Hi, recently, I had an issue with a RHEL 6.3 VM with the latest Integration Components 3.4. After live migration of the VM to another node, it was not reachable over the network anymore. Usually, the ICs send out a " Gratuitous ARP" to let each...

Hi, I'm using Dynamic Memory for all my VM's and tend to start low (512MB). However, it happend to me that some software did not install as there was not enough memory assigned. Until now, i had to shutdown the VM, adjust the startup, and started...

Hi, this is a "WOW" feature for me that I found not to be documented. Until now you could only "Import" a VM that you had previously exported. Importing a VM from just a copy of the directory was not possible, and manual steps where not easy. See...

Hi everyone, besides the Consumer Preview of Windows '"8", there was also a beta version of Windows Server "8" released here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/hh670538.aspx?ocid=&wt.mc_id=TEC_108_1_33 Hyper-V has some very...

As VMM 2012 is almost complete, I started to upgrade to the RC Version. I thought I’ll share some of my learnings: A major new feature is Service Templates , here’s my first use of it: Here is a VM template to deploy a single virtual...

Recently, we worked on an issue with time drift in a VM, and my colleague Johann Binder had an interesting finding I‘d like to share with you: The issue was with a VM that had SQL Server 2008 installed. In the eventlog of the machine we found...

Hi, today my collegue Bernd Högen has interesting finding that he would like to share: Recently, I faced the following Issue: On a W2k8 R2 SP1 Hyper-V Host Cluster with 2 CSV´s only the Coordinator Node was able to access the CSV. The...

Hi, often, I’m getting asked how to configure Time Synchronization for Hyper-V VM’s that run the Domain Controller (DC) Role. Our original recommendation was to disable the time synchronization and leave it up to the DC’s own functionality...

Hi, Recently, I’ve been working on several issues where customers reported poor network throughput. This happened on recent and performant hardware, that showed in benchmarking the 10GBit Ethernet connection, or slow Live Migration. The throughput...

Hi, If you add a NIC to a VM, it needs a MAC address that should be unique (at least in the network segment) to avoid duplicate MAC conflicts. In the properties for the VM you choose between a Dynamic or Static assignment. In case you select a Static...

Hi, I've been asked this a couple of times, and thought it might be interesting to blog.. If you have a R2 Hyper-V Host cluster, the Virtual Machine Resource has a property on the Settings page named "Heartbeat Setting" with an associated check...

Hi, Scripting time again! Really often, I need to check if the Integration Services Version of the Hyper-V guests are up to date. Some Updates für Hyper-V update the vmguest.iso on the Host. So you need to manually go the VM's afterwards and...

Hi everyone, I run a 2 node cluster with Hyper-V. While debugging and testing, i often have to reboot a node and end up with all my VM's on one node, and find myself moving them arround manually. So i came up with the below script to automate this...

Hi, Recently, I had some customers which could not Quick or Live Migrate their VMs in a Hyper-V Cluster. Although the Cluster Nodes where the same manufacture and type, migration was not possible because the destination server reported a different...

Recently, I worked on the below issue and though this might be worth to blog: On a Hyper-V Server, existing VMs where running just fine, however, we could not create new VMs. The error at the final stage of the Wizard was: The server encountered...

Recently, I've seen some problems related with BITS (Background Intelligent Transfer Service) during VM creation from SCVMM. One error I've seen is that the process appears to hang but was indeed extremely slow (1MB in 1 hour), the other was an error...

Hi, we just release a guide on how to configure your Network Cards with Hyper-V http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff428137(WS.10).aspx I had the chance to check this out up front, and if you just don't have plenty of NIC's (>3), the...

This tool saved me lots of time. So I thought I point you to it: http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/vhdtool Among some other nice features, my favorite is repair Repairs a broken Hyper-V snapshot chain where an administrator has expanded the size...

I often have the need to get more info on the .vhd and .avhd (Snapshots or Differencing) files. I use the below .vbs script to read the info from the file. Here's a sample output: C:\VMs\mergetest\> cscript vhdinfo.vbs C:\VMs\mergetest\mergetest...

Update: Meanwhile there is a further Februar Rollup available: 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 Please note...

SCVMM R2 has a nice new feature to migrate the storage location of a VM. The move is done on one particular host from one drive to another. The move can be done while the VM is offline, in safe state, or even online. What I’ve seen recently,...

Well, the title says it all. If the host you're trying to install SCVMM on has a name that contains "-SCVMM-" in upper case letters, setup fails with Error 257. Example: MUC-SCVMM-1 Resolution: Use a slightly different name, like "MUC-SCVMMR2-1...

I had a large customer where some Host occasionally where reported with an Error during Host refresh: The Error in SCVMM was: Error (2927) A Hardware Management error has occurred trying to contact server <your host name comes here>...